


Falls the Shadow

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [27]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 13:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 31,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A group of schoolchildren go missing through an anomaly in the Lake District and one of them happens to be Ryan's daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from T. S. Elliot’s poem The Hollow Men.

The day began with a rapid and disruptive scramble out of one of Cutter’s lectures.

It continued with an unfortunate lapse of judgment which precipitated Captain Ryan into Helen Cutter’s hands for something approaching an hour.

The repercussions lasted somewhat longer.

* * *

Lester glared at Ryan and slapped a file down on the desk.

“I’ve allowed you to indulge your fantasies for five days now, Captain, and frankly, that’s been five days too long. What part of discreet investigations did you fail to understand?”

The Special Forces captain stared at a point on the wall somewhere behind Sir James Lester’s left ear and didn’t reply.

The civil servant brandished a piece of paper at Ryan.

“Item One: A letter of complaint, from the Honourable Member for Lakeland South addressed to the Armed Services Minister.” 

He picked up a second sheet and waved that as well. “Item Two: A Memorandum of Complaint from the Armed Services Minister to the Directorate of Special Forces.”

More papers followed in similar fashion, “Item Three: A note of the telephone call taken by Ms Brown from your Director, and I quote, Tell Lester that if he wants to send the fuckwit back here I’ll try and find him one with more brains.”

However, the irate civil servant didn’t see fit to favour Ryan with the Director’s final words to his assistant. But tell your boss I’m not promising. Those idiots in Whitehall are determined to send most of my lads half way round the world in pursuit of smoke and mirrors, and I don’t have endless spares. So if you want my advice, just kick his arse into the middle of next week and keep him on a short lead for a while.

“Did it escape your notice that your ex-wife still has a restraining order in force against you, Captain Ryan? Or did it need a letter from her solicitors to remind you? That’s Item Four, by the way.”

Ryan now had the good grace, or good sense, Lester wasn’t quite sure which, to look uncomfortable.

The civil servant sighed heavily. “Sit down, Ryan, and try telling me what happened.”

The soldier sank uneasily into a chair. He actually preferred to stand up when he was getting a bollocking, but refusing would probably only make matters worse.

“Just a stupid bloody coincidence, sir. Her au pair’s boyfriend turns out to be the son of the owner of the B & B where we were staying. She recognised me and told Mandy.” Sorry, Amanda. “She told Greg and he got a friend in the local police to run a PNC check on the car.”

And my ex-wife’s new husband is a merchant banker with a telephone number salary and friends in High Places, so I was screwed the minute I went within a mile of their extremely expensive and fucking isolated mansion. And yes, I had forgotten the exact terms of that sodding restraining order but no, I don’t expect you to believe that so I won’t waste my breath.

“And did you have to compound the problem by assaulting a member of the local constabulary, Captain?”

Ryan looked aggrieved. “He was in plain clothes, sir. And he jumped me.”

“Well, that makes it all right then, doesn’t it? I suppose I should just be thankful that you didn’t add a firearms offence to your impressive list of misdemeanours.”

Ryan winced. Lester clearly hadn’t read page three of Item Two.

“Sorry, sir,” the soldier said, wisely deciding that sticking to apologies might be safer.

“And what do we have to show for your five day jaunt up to Beatrix Potter’s homeland, Captain Ryan? Apart from numerous letters of complaint, that is.” Lester shuffled the papers again. “Even according to the ever-faithful Dr Hart’s report we actually have precisely nothing to show for your impromptu holiday. Not unless you count one case of sheep molestation by a creature said to be the size and shape of a black Labrador, which anyone but a half-wit or possibly Temple in a creative mood, would certainly assume was a black Labrador and not the local equivalent of the Beast of Bodmin.”

“What about Helen Cutter’s threat, sir?” said Ryan stubbornly. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

Sir James Lester resisted a strong impulse to sigh again. Even he had to admit that there were only so many times sighing could be used effectively as a technique. And Ryan was irritatingly impervious to even his best long-suffering sighs.

“No, Ryan, it doesn’t count for anything. When set against Mrs Cutter’s track-record for misinformation and misdirection I think you’ll find it actually counts for fuck all. But I don’t suppose that had occurred to you, had it?”

The fact that Lester had started to swear was actually some consolation. Ryan knew perfectly well that the civil servant was at his most dangerous when he maintained his air of supercilious politeness. Lester when he resorted to obscenity was entirely more human.

“Why would she lie, sir?”

“For the same reason she lied about the sabre-toothed cats supposedly poised to cause mayhem in the city. To cause a distraction. To cause trouble. To waste time. How many reasons do you want? On top of which, she doesn’t exactly have much cause to love you, Ryan, or had that escaped your notice as well? You and Hart were up there for a week, Captain,” and don’t think I don’t know that he’s still there, by the way, thought Lester, grimly. “You didn’t manage to uncover anything more sinister than a case of sheep-worrying, which, frankly, for a week in the Great Outdoors counts as frighteningly quiet. So get over it, and get on with your job. Do I make myself clear?”

“She threatened my kid, sir.”

“She made a throwaway comment designed to wind you up. And she succeeded. Quite spectacularly. You’re lucky this didn’t cost you your rank, Ryan.”

Ryan looked dangerously close to not caring.

Lester glared.

Claudia Brown burst into the room without knocking.


	2. Chapter 2

Claudia Brown pulled away from the M6 toll booths and rapidly accelerated to a speed considerably over the legal limit.

Ryan had no complaints about his companion’s driving. Although he was probably the only person in the world who hadn’t, as she was hurtled the car along the motorways with a complete and utter disregard for speed cameras and police cars.

Manchester then Preston passed by in a haze of light pollution.

Lyle and the lads were no more than an hour behind, with Cutter and Connor following closely.

“Junction 36 next,” said Ryan, his voice flat and emotionless. “Follow signs to Kendal.”

This was the most Claudia’d had from him by way of conversation since she’d imparted the news that a group of school children and a teacher had gone missing in Kentmere on a trip to see the golden eagles. The group had included Ryan’s ten year old daughter.

He’d shut down almost instantly. Grey eyes harder and colder than she’d ever seen them, burning with a dangerous intensity. He’d turned on his heel without a word and headed for the door.

To Lester’s credit, he hadn’t even attempted to stop Ryan. He’d simply told Claudia to do the driving then had hit speed dial 2 on his phone and had ordered Lyle, in no uncertain terms, to keep the trouble to a minimum. Those words had followed her down the corridor. Claudia hadn’t found them comforting.

As she brought the car to a halt for only the second time since leaving the Home Office, Claudia understood what Lester had meant.

The woman standing in the brightly lit doorway, eyes red from crying, directed a look of pure poison at Ryan, then turned to the man next to her and ordered, “Greg, call the police, now!”

It had been a long and tiring drive. Claudia stepped forward, trying to radiate a confidence that seemed in very real danger of deserting her in the face of the woman’s obvious hostility.

“Claudia Brown, Home Office. I believe Sir James Lester telephoned earlier. As I’m sure he told you, Mrs Thornton, Captain Ryan is with Professor Cutter’s team. Now, is Dr. Hart here?”

Stephen stepped out of the shadows by the door, his expression as wary as Claudia’s. “I’ve checked the valley with the local police. Some residual magnetism, but nothing I could get much of a fix on.” The look he shot Ryan was apologetic, helpless.

“Cutter and the others will be here within the hour,” said Claudia, doing her best to sound reassuring. “We can check again then.” In the dark, and probably in the rain, but it won’t stop us looking. “Mrs Thornton, may we come in? We will do everything in our power to find your daughter and the others, and your co-operation will help. It would be more discreet if we could base ourselves here, but if not, we can find somewhere in the village. It’s your choice.”

The other man stepped forward, his face white in the light of the ornamental lamps. “I’m Greg Thornton, Ms Brown. We’ve plenty of space for your team here. The police have already set up an incident room in one of the guest cottages. I believe they’ve spoken to your office. Can we get you something to drink first?”

Relief bled into Claudia’s smile. At least he wasn’t openly hostile. “A cup of tea would be most welcome.”

Ryan’s ex-wife stood unmoving, tension radiating from every muscle, her eyes fixed on the soldier, like a mongoose might stare at a snake.

Greg Thornton turned to her, keeping his voice low and calm. “Amanda, Victoria’s Tom’s daughter too, and quite frankly, if he could help us get her back, I’d welcome the Devil himself with open arms. Now come on, inside, please.”

Amanda Thornton quite clearly didn’t agree, but she allowed her husband to take her arm and lead her back inside.

After suffering five minutes of painful sniping, Ryan went off with Stephen in search of the DCI in charge of the local police.

Claudia followed, leaving Amanda Thornton to comment loudly to the young WPC assigned as Family Liaison Officer, “He used to hit me. That’s why there’s an injunction. I don’t want him involved, no matter what the Home Office says. They can’t make me agree to having him here ………..”

Greg Thornton left with them. Their feet crunched loudly on wet gravel in a well-lit courtyard, but they were still some distance from the house before the shrill, angry tones faded into the darkness.

He turned to Ryan, unease clearly stamped across a thin, good looking face, “I’m sorry, Tom. I can’t pretend to have a bloody clue what’s going on, but nothing on God’s earth will convince Amanda that this isn’t somehow your fault……” He faltered, looked uncertain, then finished in a rush, “You will find her, won’t you?”

Ryan stared at him without speaking.

It was left to Stephen to fill the gap. The younger man reached out and put a hand lightly on Greg Thornton’s arm, “We’ll find her.” 

But his words were for Ryan, not for the man who was now the stepfather of his lover’s child.

Claudia just hoped Hart was right. But at the moment, it wasn’t looking good.


	3. Chapter 3

Clouds rolled over the moon, bringing back the rain, this time in a heavy burst that contrive to soak them all to the skin in seconds.

The fellside was pitch black and every track had turned into a quagmire. Torch beams cut the darkness in a regular line across the hillside. They’d swept the main track along the valley first, then spread outwards and upwards.

Connor had checked the instruments at regular intervals, but had found nothing. The residual magnetism that Stephen had recorded nearly ten hours ago had faded without trace. He thought they had the anomaly site pinpointed from Stephen’s earlier foray into Kentmere, but that was all they had to go on now.

He gave a last desperate glance at the gauge in his hand and shook his head. “Sorry, Ryan, still nothing. But we know they do reappear,” he added, more brightly than he felt, as freezing cold rain dropped off the brim of his hat onto his nose.

At Ryan’s side, Lyle looked down at his watch. Five am. They’d been on the hillside for something approaching seven hours. Some poor bastard, probably him, would need to stay, but it was pointless keeping this many people out any longer.

From a little way further up the hillside, Kermit yelled, “Mist’s coming down, sir!”

That decided it. “Two lucky people get the pleasure of my company here,” announced the lieutenant, loudly. “I want the rest of you out of this damned valley now.” He glanced at Ryan and added, “Including you, mate.”

Ryan opened his mouth to argue.

The look Lyle gave him in return was diamond hard.

“It’s my call, sir, you’re too close to this one, so don’t make things any more fucking difficult than they already are. Get back, get warm, get some sleep. If anything happens, I’ll call you. I’ll be in after four hours if nothing else happens.” Hazel eyes sought out Cutter in the darkness, “No pressure, Prof, but I’d like something resembling a plan, by then. We’ve done the flailing around in the dark bit. It hasn’t helped. Need a different approach now.” His hand rested on Connor’s shoulder for a moment, “See what you can come up with, chum. I can manage the brawn bit, but I reckon we need brains now.”

Connor grinned damply, but failed to suppress a shiver.

The expression on Ryan’s face was as cold as the mist rolling in over the hills, but to everyone’s relief, the Special Forces captain simply turned without a word and headed back down to the vehicles.

Half an hour later he stood in a shower the size of a small bedroom, hot water spraying around him, but failing to warm the cold, hard knot of fear that had settled on his stomach like an iced stone.

Stephen threw his own soaking wet clothes in a heap and joined his lover in the shower.

The fact that they were sharing a room shouldn’t be enough to give Ryan’s bitch of an ex-wife anything to make a fuss about, Cutter and Connor were doing the same, but he doubted that very much went undetected under her sharp nose, especially where her ex-husband was concerned.

The new bloke didn’t seem too bad, which was something, but how the hell Ryan kept his temper under the barbed onslaught that headed his way every time she opened her mouth, he’d never know.

Christ, and Stephen thought he’d had bad luck with women in the past …………

He slid his arms around the other man and turned Ryan to face him. “Don’t shut me out, Ryan. I know this is shit and I don’t have kids, so I can only guess at how you’re feeling, but don’t shut me out. Promise?”

His lover simply leant forward into the embrace and let his head rest on Stephen’s shoulder for a moment.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

* * *

A thump on the door dragged both men out of sleep.

“Vermin sighting!”

The voice was Finn’s but it was Connor who entered the room at a run.

“Lyle’s radioed in. An anomaly’s opened above the reservoir at the head of the Kentmere valley. Says he’s got a flock of pterosaurs and an excited bird-watcher.”

The two men scrambled for dry clothes.

They got as far as the wrought-iron gates at the end of the drive before Lyle radioed again, telling everyone except Connor and Stephen to stay where they were. The anomaly had closed. He still wanted Connor’s knowledge of critters and Stephen’s dart-gun, but whether the latter was for the pterosaurs or the twitcher, wasn’t entirely clear, but Lyle was adamant that he didn’t want to deal with more people than strictly necessary. By which he meant Ryan. Cutter was surprisingly good at keeping the Special Forces leader on a short rein, and the lieutenant figured Claudia would be glad of the professor for back-up in that department.

Two hours later, Lyle arrived back, in company with Stephen.

The soldier was bone white and obviously freezing cold. His hands shook around the mug of hot coffee that a silent Greg Thornton handed him.

Lyle met Ryan’s eyes and shook his head. “It’s not the one. Trust me on that. This one was ten metres in the air in the middle of the lake. But it proves the area’s still active, and that’s something.”

“How long was it open for?” demanded Cutter.

“No more than half an hour, max. The bird-watcher saw it open. The pterosaurs came through within five minutes. Fortunately for us it looks like the damp fucked his phone up, otherwise the whole bloody scene would’ve been plastered all over the internet before he’d even left the site. The first we knew of it was when DCI Richards saw him coming down the track in his car going like a bat out of hell and pulled him on spec. Suspicious sod.” Lyle’s voice held unmistakeable approval. “We’re all starring in a British version of Jurassic Park, by the way.”

The lieutenant managed a brief grin. The DCI had impressed him, and Lyle didn’t impress easily.

Calum Richards also had an eleven year old nephew on the wrong side of the anomaly, which made the guy’s calm acceptance of the whole freaking situation even more impressive, in Lyle’s view. They hadn’t always been lucky with the local police on other jobs, the Forest of Dean excepted, so the surprisingly young DCI made a very pleasant change.

The hardest job right now would be keeping the media out of the picture, but between the police and the Home Office, Lyle just had to trust that the rest of them would be left alone to do their jobs while other people dealt with the political and personal fall out.

“So what have we got, Lyle?” demanded Cutter. “Give me some detail to work with, man.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “Connor thinks Jurassic, late Jurassic probably. Big buggers, wingspan between one and two metres. He says harmless. Filter feeders, small fish, that sort of thing. Look bloody impressive though. The bird-watcher was practically creaming himself until Richards dropped the special effects line, then did him for a faulty brake-light.”

And the guy had been too excited to notice Lyle kicking the tail-light in and stamping the bits into the mud. As a distraction, the lecture he’d got treated to for dangerous driving and inadequate lights had been pretty effective.

“Centochasma or Gnathosaurus, maybe,” muttered Cutter. “Late Jurassic would be right. Any sign of other activity?”

Lyle shook his head. “We’ve left two men at the reservoir, and Kermit’s still watching the original site with one of the coppers. I’ve sent Fiver and Fizz to take over before he gets hypothermic. It’s still fucking foul out there, and just getting bloody worse by the look of it. Richards reckons it’s set in for the day. Only good thing is it’ll keep walkers and the like out of our hair. We can’t secure the area, that’s for bloody sure, it’d take a regiment.”

“So what next?” said Cutter, quietly, talking more to himself than the others.

“We find your wife, Professor.” said Ryan, grey eyes expressionless, all emotion locked tightly away. “That’s what we do next. She knew this was going to happen, so she’ll be around here somewhere, won’t she?”

“I’ve given her description to Calum and his lads,” said Lyle quickly, before Cutter could reply. “If she shows her face, she’ll get picked up. It’s a small community round here, strangers will stand out like a sore thumb.” As Ryan had found out, to his cost.

Greg Thornton’s head jerked up at the soldier’s words. “What does she look like?”

Everyone in the room turned to stare at him.

Amanda Thornton stood in the doorway, the look on her face closely resembling her ex-husband’s glacial expression.

Either look would have done a good job of freezing Hell.


	4. Chapter 4

“You saw a woman watching _our_ house… watching _my_ child… and you didn’t see fit to tell me?” Amanda Thornton’s voice shook with anger.

Her husband met the angry blue eyes and looked uneasy. “I saw her twice, maybe three times, only once near here. I didn’t think much about it until after the incident with Tom. Then I remembered I’d seen her a few months ago as well, so I told Calum. I thought it was just my paranoia, Amanda, but better safe than sorry. He said he’d get his lads to keep an eye out…”

“Safe? We weren’t safe, were we, Greg? Vicky wasn’t safe, either. If she was safe, she’d be here now, not God only knows where…”

God only knows when, thought Stephen, fleetingly.

This wasn’t going to work. They couldn’t do their jobs here, not with Ryan’s ex-wife in their faces every minute, poison dripping from her fangs each time she opened her mouth. He threw a quick glance at Claudia.

“Mrs Thornton,” said Claudia, in her best trust me I’m a civil servant voice, “your husband did the right thing. Everyone has done the right thing so far. There’s no reason to suspect that Helen Cutter is in any way connected with Victoria’s disappearance …..”

“She was here. He,” pointing at Ryan, “was involved as well. Now you bring that woman’s husband into my house and you try to tell me this is your team! What the hell is going on, Miss Brown? I want a solicitor, and I want one now!”

Stephen winced. They had enough trouble on their hands without adding lawyers to the mix. Unless they were experts in predicting the appearance of magnetic fields or bloody good with a gun. The latter was always a useful skill around anomalies in his experience.

“For fuck’s sake, Mandy, what do you expect a solicitor to do? Join a search party at three hundred quid an hour? Serve me with another bloody injunction or just referee the fights? They weren’t much good at that last time, were they?”

“Don’t swear! And don’t call me Mandy!”

Ryan laughed, the sound like a knife scraping stone. His eyes were hard as he opened his mouth to reply.

Claudia forestalled him.

“Mrs Thornton, Professor Cutter’s team has the full backing of the Home Office,” or should I say the three people in Government with half a clue what’s going on? But maybe we’d better draw a discreet veil over that, like we do over everything else. “He has the necessary experience to deal with this so I suggest that we let him, and everyone else, work to bring your daughter back. You look exhausted, you really should try and get some rest. I’ll tell you the minute we have some news, I promise…”

Claudia gestured to the door and something in her tone contrived to inject a welcome note of finality into the exchange. The young policewoman promptly used it as an opportunity to usher Amanda Thornton out of the room.

Cutter ran an hand through his hair, “Thanks, Claudia. I’m not sure any of us could have…” remembering Greg Thornton’s presence, he came to an abrupt halt and looked apologetic.

The other man just looked tired. “Put up with that much longer?” he hazarded. “Her daughter’s missing, Professor Cutter. Remember?” He glanced at Ryan, a look of uncertainty in his eyes. “Tom? Can we talk in private?”

Ryan followed the other man out of the room and up the stairs, reluctance showing in every movement he made. He walked like he was heading towards a firing squad.

Greg Thornton opened a door at the end of a long corridor and stood back, letting Ryan enter first.

The soldier stopped dead, taking in every aspect of the room in one quick, hard glance. Then he drew in a deep breath and inhaled the scent of his daughter. Talcum powder and leather.

He almost laughed.

The riding tack was still spread out on the floor, only half polished. A dirty rag lay next to a large trophy, next to an even larger fluffy white rabbit.

Then he nearly cried.

He’d sent her that rabbit for her birthday, four months ago. He’d expected it to have gone straight in the bin, with all the other presents and cards he’d sent but that hadn’t stopped him sending them.

“She’s still your daughter, Tom,” said the other man in a voice barely above a whisper. “She needs to know her daddy loves her. Whatever her mother may think. When I found out you were still sending stuff, I made sure she got it. Amanda hates it. It’s the only fucking thing we row about. So I’m going to shut this door, and you’re going to tell me what the fuck is really going on. Then that way, I might just manage to keep my wife off all our backs long enough for you lot to find Vicky and the others and bring them back. Just do me one favour, Tom. Don’t slag her off. Whatever you do, don’t slag her off. She’s my wife now.”

Ryan half-turned, exhaling a long, pent-up breath and for the first time since entering the house, he met someone else’s eyes. “Do me a favour too? Call me Ryan. Only Amanda calls me Tom.” Amanda, and Helen Cutter.

And with the white rabbit cradled on his knees, the soldier proceeded to tear the Official Secrets Act into small pieces and tell Greg Thornton as much as he needed to know. The bits that he hadn’t already gathered from Claudia, that is. It rather looked like they were beyond the point of trying to cover this one up.

At the end of the story, the younger man walked over to the window, and leant his forehead against the cold glass. “What fucking chance have they got, Ryan? Tell me that.”

Somewhere outside in the teeming rain, a dog howled.

Ryan shrugged. He didn’t think _I haven’t a fucking clue_ would sound very inspirational.

The howl turned to a yelp.

Ryan’s hand went instinctively for his gun.


	5. Chapter 5

“Fox,” said Lyle, as Ryan entered the kitchen at a run, Greg Thornton hard on his heels.

“You saw it?” the Special Forces captain sounded sceptical.

“Stephen did. It headed off across the yard. He’s gone out with Finn to take a scout round. No point in taking chances.” Lyle bent down and finished his examination of a long rip in the black Labrador’s ear. “Speaking of which, this poor old chap needs stitches.”

Greg sighed. “It isn’t his first run-in with that fox. It took a chunk out of his leg last week. Come on, Harvey, it’s the vets for you again, lad.” He shot a grateful look at Lyle. “Thanks. If your guy with the rifle spots the bugger, ask him to put the damn thing down. It’s caused havoc round here recently.”

No-one spoke until they heard the car doors slam and the crunch of tyres on the gravel drawing away from the house.

“Fox?” Ryan said.

He wasn’t the only one who looked sceptical.

Ten minutes later, Stephen came in through the outside door to the kitchen, running a hand through his wet hair, causing it to stand up in dark spikes. His blue eyes sought out Ryan’s and he was pleasantly surprised to realise that for the first time since entering the house his lover’s eyes hadn’t just slid past him to fix on some undefined point in the middle distance.

“I saw something brown and furry with a bushy tail disappearing into the undergrowth. Looked like a fox.”

“If it looks like a fox and runs like a fox…” muttered Cutter.

“…it probably is a fox,” finished Stephen, but the vivid blue eyes held unmistakeable traces of doubt. He shrugged and added, “It’s raining pretty hard out there and the mist has dropped big time, but I did see some tracks that I couldn’t identify. I think we need to talk to DCI Richards again. Make sure there’s been nothing going on around here that they haven’t told us.”

Forest of Dean syndrome, as they’d come to think of it. The seemingly endless capacity of otherwise normal people to either rationalise, or simply ignore even the strangest of events, in the hope of not attracting the wrong sort of attention.

The young Detective Chief Inspector settled himself in a kitchen chair, accepted the coffee Claudia slid over the table to him and looked wary.

Cutter fixed him with a stare that would have had an entire lecture theatre of students hiding under their seats. “You’re holding something back, DCI Richards.” It was a statement, not a question.

Half an hour later, the DCI looked sheepish. The rest of them looked stunned.

“Why don’t we just put an advert on the tele?” muttered Lyle. “Wanted : Weird stories. Preferably involving teeth and claws. Your chance to star in I’m a Palaeontologist, Get Me Out of Here. That’d bring ‘em out of the woodwork.”

And he now knew why Calum Richards had been so quick off the mark with the cover-story he’d thrown at the bird-watcher. Practice. Long practice.

“What is it with you people?” demanded Cutter. “Do you think this sort of thing is normal?”

“Well, it’s hardly a good way to advance your career,” snapped the policeman, defensively. “Please, sir, I think I’ve just seen something that’s meant to have been dead and gone a gazillion years ago. The Chief Constable isn’t known for his interest in science fiction, and the Government doesn’t exactly advertise that it’s got a bunch of dinosaur-busters on call. So we do what we always do out in the countryside: we make the best of a bad job and keep it quiet.”

The kitchen door opened and Connor walked in, carrying his laptop and dripping water all over the tiled floor. “Running out of power,” he remarked. “Have I just missed something interesting, guys?”

“Detective Chief Inspector Richards was just about to start giving us a list of locally known anomaly sites,” said Claudia, brightly. Making a mental note to think about Lyle’s comment later. Maybe they could come up with something a bit more subtle that might have the same effect.

Connor grinned. “Cool. Give me the details and I’ll enter ‘em onto the database.” He dropped his sopping wet hat on the kitchen table. His nose looked equally damp. “Where shall we start?”

“With dry clothes and a handkerchief?” suggested Claudia, wondering not for the first time what it would take to shake the student’s irrepressible enthusiasm.

* * *

Connor flickered his intense dark eyes over to the still-embarrassed policeman and asked, “Any more?”

The DCI shook his head.

Connor grinned.

There were now twelve red dots over-laid on the map on his screen, and for the life of him, he couldn’t see any relationship between them. More data would help, it usually did, but even Connor was now forced to admit that they’d probably dredged everything they could out of Calum Richards’ memory.

The descriptions of the creatures had been vague, but it sounded very much like a motley collection of small herbivores, as well as an alvarezsaurid kept by someone as a pet and passed off as a fancy chicken; a juvenile platecarpus in one of the tarns which had played havoc with the fishing until finally caught and discretely disposed of and a herd of hyracotherium which a group of tourists had mistaken for very small capybaras.

Oh, and according to Calum, one of the local farmer’s daughters had a horse-like creature she was very fond of, but fortunately it was useless over jumps so the local gymkhana had been spared the sight of a merychippus competing for a rosette. Equally fortunately, the farm was one of the most isolated in the area.

“No pattern,” said the student, staring hard at the list. “But the whole area’s as active as a dog with fleas. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Depends if you live round here or not, Con,” said Stephen, casting a wary glance over at Ryan.

The Special Forces captain was looking over Connor’s shoulder at the screen, face impassive, but the hands which gripped the back of the kitchen chair were white-knuckled. “It’s a good thing,” he said, quietly. “It has to be.”

Cutter reached out and rested a hand briefly on Ryan’s arm. “We’ll find her. Hold onto that and don’t let go, man.”

Ryan nodded, but it looked like the movement had been wrenched out of him against his will and his eyes remained bleak.

Nick Cutter fixed the policeman with another hard stare. “I want word put out around here that if anything else happens, we need to know about it immediately. Not next week, next month or never, but immediately. Got that? And if my wife is in the vicinity, I want to talk to her and I really don’t care how you arrange it.”

DCI Richards nodded and reached for his radio.

If the woman was still in the area, they’d have her by the end of the day.

* * *

The kitchen of the Thornton’s house was starting to resemble a check-point on a large scale orienteering course in extremely wet weather.

Over the course of the day, the hub of the various activities slowly and almost imperceptibly shifted from the guest cottage to the main house and ended up revolving around Connor and his ever-present lap-top.

In between staring at his database of anomalies and drinking endless cups of coffee, the student had also started keeping track of the activities of both Ryan’s men and the various police officers assigned to them and by lunchtime, it had become the habit of all of them to announce their arrivals and departures for logging.

There were a lot of potential sites to check and they were spread thinly, too thinly in Ryan’s view, but Lester had refused to send more men. The anomaly sites in the Forest of Dean were also reporting high levels of activity and he was keeping Stringer and his team down there, whether Ryan liked it or not. He’d already despatched Abby as back-up for Stringer and the Mitchells and the civil servant had told both Ryan and Cutter, in equally firm terms, to work with what they had and make the best of it.

Connor looked up as a sopping wet Lyle came in through the back door, followed by an equally drenched Ditzy. In response to Connor’s questioning look, the medic shook his head and started peeling off his jacket and tac vest.

The student made the necessary adjustments to his list. “You two taking the next one? It’s up by Kirkstone Pass.”

“Fifteen minutes for a brew, then we’ll go.” Lyle stared down in disgust at his clothes. He was soaked to the skin and none of them had more than one change in the van.

“Fifteen minutes in the tumble-drier will do some good,” said a voice from the doorway. “Strip as much off as you want, Jon, it’s a big drier.”

Lyle looked up sharply, the expression on his face not dissimilar to the one he wore when facing something that had been at the head of the queue when teeth and claws had been handed out.

He shook his head. “Tea’ll warm us up.” The lieutenant glanced hopefully at the kettle on a huge range, filling almost half of one wall of the massive kitchen.

“Modest or just bloody-minded?” said Ryan’s ex-wife as she busied herself with mugs. “If it’s the former, you’ve changed. If it’s the latter, you haven’t.”

Lyle gave an unwilling laugh and started to remove his black fleece sweater and black shirt, leaving behind an equally wet tee shirt of the same colour. He was treated to a hard stare from a pair of red-rimmed blue eyes that had clearly spent a good proportion of the last day and night crying.

With a sigh, he pulled the tee shirt over his head and handed it over. “You as well, mate,” he muttered to Ditzy.

The medic shrugged and followed suit.

“Pour one for me,” Amanda Thornton instructed, as she grabbed an armful of wet clothes and went through to the utility room. As an after-thought, she added, “I don’t take sugar any more.”

Lyle glanced helplessly at Connor and asked, “Where’s Claudia?”

“Talking to the mothers of the other kids.”

“Media?”

Connor shook his head. “Nope. This lot don’t like outsiders.”

“Shame they don’t put up warning signs, then.” Amanda Thornton’s voice was brittle with bitterness. “This place had been on the market for over two years. I’m now beginning to see why. Where’s my husband?”

Connor’s eyes flickered over his computer screen. “With Ryan on Bampton Common, above Haweswater. Looks like one opened there last year. Another possible pterasaur sighting.”

The expression on Lyle’s face became slightly more intent. “Cutter?”

“Somewhere called Potter Tarn.”

“East of Staveley,” Amanda said, automatically. “Nice walks round there in better weather.”

“Stephen?”

“If we’re playing Twenty Questions, it’s my turn,” Conner grinned.

“Conner!” Lyle’s voice had taken on a parade ground edge and his hazel eyes were suddenly sharp.

“Caiston Glen.”

Ditzy shot Lyle a questioning look and received the briefest of nods. The two soldiers started staring intently at the site list. Connor hit two keys and an area map appeared, each possible anomaly marked with a blood red dot.

“What have you found, Jon?” A spark of hope leapt into Amanda Thornton’s pinched face and for the first time softened the ever present hostility.

“Mines,” breathed Lyle. “They’re all near fucking mining sites. It’s the bloody Forest all over again! I knew Bampton Common rang a bell. Haweswater Mine. I helped to haul a trail hound out of a shaft there ten years ago.” He held his left hand out, displaying a puckered white scar behind the knuckle of his little finger. “Bloody thing bit me.”

Whatever the soldier was about to say next was interrupted by the ringing of his mobile phone from the depth of one of the pockets in his tac vest, thrown over the back of one of the chairs.

“Ryan? Where are you? … No, we’re back at the house. Are your radios working? … No, I didn’t think they would be. Get back here, we need to talk. I think we’ve got a link between the sites …yeh, a link. Mines. Copper. Lead. The area’s stiff with the stuff. Call the others and get back here. I need to phone Lester.”

Connor looked up from the screen, his face alive with interest, “You’re right! This is only the second place we’ve found multiple anomaly sites so close together.” He waved his hand at the screen. “How many of these can you identify for definite?”

“I’m not that big on mines, Con. I’ve only played around underground in this area a few times. I remembered Bampton Common because of the dog. But I need to check I’m not barking up the wrong tree…” as he spoke, the soldier was hitting one of the buttons on his phone.

“Sir? … Screw your meeting, I need to run something past you…yeah, whatever …You’ve dived in Copper Mines Valley, haven’t you? How well do you know the rest of the area? …OK, try these names for size, tell me if you recognise any of them…”

Lyle started reeling off the list from Connor’s screen, pausing every now and again to listen. When he’d finished, he nodded, hazel eyes still fixed intently on the screen. “Right, for what good it does us, we’ve got a connection to ore-bearing rock. Same as the Forest. Thanks.” He listened again and a slow grin spread across his face. “I’ll make it up to you when I get back, sweetie. Give my love to the PM.”

Connor winced. He had a hard job, a very hard job, imagining Lyle with Lester, and whenever he tried, something in his brain went scrambling for the reset button pleading for a re-boot. Now was no exception.

He watched a similar look of surprise flash across Amanda Thornton’s eyes before she demanded, “What does it mean, Jon?”

The soldier sighed, “I wish I knew, Mandy. I wish I fucking knew. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the amount of minerals in the rock attracting, or maybe intensifying, the magnetic fields of the anomalies. Connor, am I making sense?”

The student nodded, slowly. “And whenever we’re near them, the radios always foul up. It happened in the Forest, and it’s happening here. We always end up using our mobiles. And Lester always snarks about paying the bills. So maybe, just maybe…”

Connor’s voice trailed off, his words failing to keep up with his racing thoughts.

A bang on the outer door of the kitchen made all of them jump.

DCI Calum Richards walked in, a look of triumph on his face. “There’s someone out here I need you to take a look at, Lieutenant, I’d just like to make sure I haven’t kidnapped an innocent member of the public.”

A moment later, Lyle and Ditzy were out in the yard, freezing rain falling unnoticed on bare shoulders.

Helen Cutter eyed them both up and down, amusement flickering in her dark eyes, “Don’t tell me I’ve interrupted yet another party. What fun you boys do have…”

Amanda Thornton started to close the gap between her and the other woman, anger blazing unchecked, “Where’s my daughter…?”

Lyle’s arm shot out and he pulled Ryan’s ex-wife to him, feeling tremors of emotion running through her slim shoulders. “Easy, Mandy, leave her to us. Stick our guest somewhere safe, Calum, and don’t take your bloody eyes off her. I’ll talk to her when I’ve got a few more clothes on. And Mrs Cutter knows exactly what happens when she plays dumb around me, so maybe in the meantime she’ll remember where she’s left her manners.” 

The look the soldier gave Helen was cold and calculating. “Believe me, lady, Ryan’s nowhere near as polite as I am when it comes to asking questions. And he’s on his way back here right now.”


	6. Chapter 6

Lyle leant against the wall, not taking his eyes off Helen. He’d sooner turn his back on a sabre-toothed cat.

“Anything you’d like to tell me before Ryan gets here, Mrs C? Like where we might find half a dozen scared school kids and their teacher, maybe?”

“What makes you think I know where they are, Lieutenant?”

“The fact that trouble follows you around like a bad smell, maybe?”

“Has it never occurred that I might follow trouble around trying to prevent it?”

The soldier’s smile held no trace of humour. “Let me think about that one for a microsecond …….. nope, don’t believe you. If you wanted to prevent trouble, you’d have warned us about the anomaly in the Devil’s Crowll.”

“I did. You just didn’t listen.”

“The Plain English Campaign’s clearly passed you by, lady. You sent a cryptic message. I’d hardly call that trying to prevent trouble. A child and two guys died down there. An earlier warning might have helped. I had to dislocate your fucking finger to get anything at all out of you. Remember?”

The look in her eyes told him she did remember.

A vehicle came to a rapid halt in the yard outside the cottage and car doors slammed, noisily and carelessly.

Ryan came through the door, already questioning, “Lyle, you said you had something…” his voice trailed off in surprise and he came to an abrupt halt, eyes rapidly becoming as cold as his soaking wet clothing. “Helen. What an unexpected pleasure.” He shot a quick glance at Greg Thornton. “Recognise her?”

The other man nodded. His face grim.

“Am I under arrest?” Helen Cutter demanded, addressing her question to Calum Richards.

The DCI shook his head. “We’d just like a few words, ma’am, if that’s all right with you?”

“And what if it isn’t?”

“Then you can have a chat with my superior and register your complaints later. Just one thing, though, the teacher that’s missing? She’s my Superintendent’s sister. He’s very fond of her. So how about you tell us something that might help us get them back?”

“I want to talk to my husband.” Helen’s expression contained something dangerously close to smugness.

Lyle’s eyes flickered over to Ryan.

Ryan’s smile was anything but pleasant. “Bad luck. There’s lousy mobile coverage round here. Talk to me, instead.”

“No.”

“Shall I fetch Ditzy?” Lyle’s question dropped into the silence like a stone.

The policeman and Helen looked equally puzzled.

The smile on Ryan’s face slid into a feral grin.

Ten minutes later, the medic squeezed a small drop of liquid out of a syringe and asked, “Would one of you do the honours? I’d rather not lose an eye.”

Lyle caught both of the woman’s wrists easily in one hand, her wiry strength no match for his. “Just a little prick with a needle, sweetie.” He caught Ditzy’s eye and grinned, “Well, she’d only have said it if I hadn’t.”

Helen Cutter stared at DCI Richards, her expression challenging. “Are you just going to let them do this?”

“This is a small community, Mrs Cutter. My nephew is missing as well. He’s a nice lad. But he’s got hearing difficulties. So he’s going to find it even harder to survive where they’ve ended up. That’s if he’s even still alive. So right now I’d actually be quite happy to beat the truth out of you myself, but from what I know of it, this method’s probably less painful.”

The policeman turned on his heel and left the room without a backward glance. Greg Thornton followed him, leaving Helen alone with the soldiers.

Ditzy slid the needle home into the crook of Helen Cutter’s arm and pressed the plunger. “Give it ten minutes,” he remarked, picking up his bag.

Lyle released her. Helen sank abruptly to the knees, shaking her head slightly. Less than a minute later, she looked up, anger giving way to a look of faint surprise.

Lyle caught her, just before her head hit the stone floor.

“I’ll take it from here,” said Ryan, softly.

The lieutenant raised one eyebrow carefully, a trick he’d picked up from his lover. Ryan met his gaze calmly.

Lyle felt like he was staring into both barrels of a loaded shotgun. A shiver ran down his spine and it took an effort of will to force himself to remember that the man he was facing was actually someone he trusted with his life. He threw a quick glance at the woman slumped unconscious on the floor. “I said you’d be better off talking to me, but you wouldn’t listen.”

The door closed quietly behind him.

Ryan reached over, turned the key in the lock, and slipped it into one of the pockets of his tac vest.

It actually only took eight minutes before Helen Cutter started to stir. When she opened her eyes, the look of surprise had gone, but the anger hadn’t.

Helen put out a hand and grabbed the back of the large sofa, using it to drag herself upright. Ryan made no move to help.

“What do I need to do to get my daughter back?”

“Try being nice to me. It gets lonely in the past, Ryan.”

“So why stay there?”

“So much to see, so many wonders…”

“So little time?” The Special Forces captain closed the gap between them in two strides. “You tried that approach on your husband, and it didn’t work with him, either, remember? What is it you really want? If it’s companionship, why didn’t you take Cutter with you eight years ago? I get the impression he would have followed you into hell if you’d asked him. Or why didn’t you come back sooner? Why leave it until now?”

“Come back for what? A procession of pretty students with their brains in their dicks? A husband who was more interested in the past than he was in me? I didn’t have much of an incentive to share, back then. Not with the way he’d been treating me. He ignored me, Ryan. And I was bored.”

Ryan stood unmoving as Helen Cutter came up close and ran one hand along the line of his jaw. Her suntanned fingers felt warm on his cold skin as they slid round to caress his ear. Her dark eyes were still sharp, although the pupils looked more dilated than usual.

“Your attentions last time left a scar. Don’t do that again.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect pout.

The questing fingers slid down along the edge of his ear and she caught the lobe between finger and thumb, feeling the scar from the split left behind by her nails on their previous encounter.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” breathed Ryan, sidestepping and catching her hands in one fluid movement, pulling her round so that her back was pressed hard up against his equipment vest. He dragged her hands round to one side, holding them in a grip that would bruise.

His right hand snaked round her and caught her round the waist. The movement made the front of her shirt gape open. She’d left enough cleavage showing even on a wet day in winter.

Didn’t the bloody woman feel the cold?

The hiss of her indrawn breath was loud in the silence of the cottage. But he noticed that she moved into his grasp, not away from it.

Ryan’s lips twisted into a half smile.

It was time to test a theory.

Ryan’s hand slipped inside her shirt and inside her bra, cold fingers dragging hard tracks across Helen’s breast, nails leaving behind white trails on sun-tanned skin to mark their passing.

Her breathing was more rapid now and she seemed to be squirming into his grip rather than away from it.

He slid his free hand down over the tight, muscular plane of her stomach, flipping open the button on the waistband of her trousers and pulling at the zip. It slid down easily, allowing his hand to drop further.

Eight minutes had passed.

He heard a car pulling into the yard.

Helen stiffened against him.

“Hoping for rescue? Or hoping we won’t get disturbed? Don’t worry, it’d take a platoon to get past Lyle. I repeat, what will it take to make you talk?”

“Sodium Pentothal, presumably,” sneered Helen. “Whatever happened to the Geneva Convention?” She drew in her breath sharply as Ryan’s hand dipped lower. “Aren’t you getting enough of it from Stephen, soldier boy? He can be a coy little bastard at times, though, can’t he? Gone all frigid on you, I expect. He got like that with me, too.” She twisted suddenly in his grip, facing him now, arms snaking round his neck. “I’m lonely, Ryan. Why won’t you believe me? Be nice to me and I’ll help you find them. You can trust me.”

He slid one hand round the curve of her hip, while the other slipped up underneath her shirt again. She felt like a racing greyhound, all smooth flesh and slightly quivering muscle. On balance, Ryan decided he’d rather be stroking a different sort of bitch. One with fur. One less likely to bite.

“Tell me what it’s like back there,” murmured the soldier, directly into her ear, his tongue licking gently at the hollow behind the lobe.

Her hands caught at the back of his tac vest. “Where? The Permian? Forget it, you’ve been there. It’s dry… harsh…. the dust gets into your skin. You spend longer looking for water and avoiding the cockroaches than you do admiring the sky. But it’s beautiful, in it’s own way. I’ll give it that. It seems bigger, somehow, more real….more alive. But it’s not a good place to be at night…”

Her shudder caught both of them unawares and just for a moment, Ryan’s arms tightened around her.

Helen nuzzled at his neck. “It’s the Cretaceous you want to see, Ryan, the plants are beautiful… plants, flowering for the first time… plants and trees…”

_Things with fucking great big teeth… sorry, lady, not my idea of fun… and this isn’t doing much for me either…_

“So where am I going to find them, sweetheart?”

She snuggled closer, steering one of his hands back to her hip. “What makes you think I know?”

He let her take possession of his fingers and guide them downwards, as she pulled back enough to allow him easy access.

“You know more about the anomalies than anyone, Helen. If Lester knew we had you here now, he’d be on his way up before you could say hello.” He slipped his hand between her legs. And felt a long exhalation of breath against his cheek.

“His trained ape’ll have told him by now, I ‘spect.”

“Lyle’s under my command in the field,” Ryan breathed, with less than perfect truth.

His fingers made small, circular movements, drawing a low moan out of her. She sucked hard at the base of his neck, kissing and biting. Ryan was sure she was nowhere near as far gone as she appeared, but she certainly wasn’t entirely faking the arousal, he had ample evidence of that under his fingertips. And as far as he knew, increased lubrication wasn’t a side-effect of the drug.

“I’ll help you. I’ve said I will. I don’t want to be on my own any more, Ryan…”

The soldier’s fingers dipped and stroked and he felt a slight tremor start to beat in her thigh muscles, “So tell me where they are, Helen. Just tell me and…”

Her head snapped back and she laughed, eyes suddenly bright with malice. “And you’ll do what, Captain? Ride off into the sunset with me and live happily ever after, dumping Blue Eyes by the wayside? Yes, of course you will! You’ll drag me off back to the depths of the bloody Home Office, more like, the way you did last time.”

Fucking useless drug!

Ryan knew from his own experience that there was no such thing as a truth drug, and this proved it yet again. All thiopental did was make the subject more likely to talk, working to weaken a person’s resolve and make them more compliant to pressure. But compliant and Helen weren’t words that sat easily together. It had been worth a try, but it looked like he might need to use more conventional methods…

His free hand got a grip on her short hair, pulling her teeth out of reach of his flesh. In reaction, her thighs clenched around his other hand, trying to deny him entrance. Ryan laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. One twist of his wrist was enough to force her legs apart, and one finger slipped easily inside. She was too wet for it to hurt, but her breath hissed sharply between her teeth.

“Is this your idea of being nice?”

His next laugh sent a shiver down her back which he felt, as well as saw.

“When was the last time someone brought you off without you having to do all the work yourself, Helen? Doesn’t that count as nice? Was it with Kermit? I don’t think so. He says you didn’t even untie his hands. You nearly got the lad sent back to base over that little episode, by the way.”

Her pupils were so dilated now that her eyes looked almost black. “I’m surprised you kept him, Captain. Wouldn’t Lester sign the chitty for a replacement?”

Ryan pushed harder with his fingers. Her breath slid out in a gasp and she squirmed, sinking down onto his hand.

“Kermit convinced me he’d have no trouble putting a bullet in you. I rather got the impression he’d enjoy it, actually, given half a chance.”

For a second, he tensed, expecting her to spit in his face, then he felt an involuntary movement from her hips and another tremor in her thighs. On impulse, Ryan kept his fingers moving, rubbing almost hard enough to hurt, and certainly hard enough to make her squirm.

“Tell me where to find them and I’ll stop.”

“What makes you think I want you to stop?” she shot back, through gritted teeth.

“Make your fucking mind up!” His hand twisted hard in her hair. “Where. Are. They ?”

“Enjoying the flowers!”

The Cretaceous? Another of her lies or the truth, for once?

Her next movement ground her hip against his groin, and with a sickening lurch of his own stomach, Ryan realised he was hard. Hard and aching.

Her laughter this time held a tinge of wildness. “Camp out on the fells for the next ten hours and you might just get lucky. That one comes and goes, but it doesn’t stay open for long. You’d better just hope they haven’t strayed far from it on the other side, though ….”

“The same one they went though?” Ryan’s fingers carried on working, still stroking on the wrong side of too hard but he could see the effect it was having on her. He hadn’t been wrong with his earlier guesses. Helen Cutter liked it rough.

Eyes half closed, panting now, mouth slack, tongue moving as though she wanted someone to kiss. Her head strained forward, mouth seeking his. Her hips were shifting into his hand now, demanding more.

“Linked,” she panted, “there are two or three round here that seem linked. Haven’t figured all of the connections out yet, too many nosy bloody locals. Kentmere, Bampton Common, Potter Tarn. Any of them should get you to close to the same place. For now, at least. Next week? Who knows…” Her eyes opened wider, expression almost startled, “Ryan, don’t stop, please…”

Ryan froze abruptly. “If you’re lying…”

Helen’s hips pushed hard onto his fingers. “It’s the truth, you bastard!”

“It better be, for your sake.” The tone of Ryan’s voice brought her movements to an equally abrupt halt.

She tried to pull away from him, fear leaping into her eyes, but the soldier’s grip held firm. It took no more than half a dozen quick, flickering movements of his finger before she stiffened and cried out, her chest arching against the rough wet material of his tac vest.

Ryan dragged his hand free, pushing her away from him.

She stumbled to the sofa and lay there in a loose limbed sprawl, eyes lingering on the tell-tale bulge in his black combat trousers. “Fuck me, Ryan.” And with those words, she pushed her trousers further down over slim hips.

He dragged a rag from one pocket of his vest and wiped his fingers carefully, before dropping it to the floor. “Yeh, fuck you, Helen.”

Her abuse followed him out of the door.

Shoving the key into Lyle’s hands, he ordered, “Lock that fucking door. Keep Cutter and Hart out until I say so.” With that Ryan rounded the side of the building, heart pounding and stomach churning.

Lyle took one look inside, saw Helen Cutter, trousers shoved down to her thighs, face creased into… laughter? Tears? Both? Then he dragged the door closed, turned the key in the lock and followed Ryan, leaving a stunned looking Kermit to face whoever arrived next.

The Special Forces captain slammed the knuckles of one hand hard into the rough stone wall of the cottage. The other hand followed suit, splitting skin to the bone.

Lyle grabbed his wrist before Ryan could do himself any more damage. “What the fuck just happened?”

Ryan’s stomach lurched again and he just managed to grind out the words, “Gave her the best fucking orgasm of her life, I think,” before proceeding to be violently sick. When the heaving finally subsided, Ryan straightened up and dragged a sleeve across his mouth. “I didn’t rape her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Lyle shook his head, “It wasn’t. I served in Bosnia too, mate. We both saw enough rape there to last a lifetime. The question is, did you get what we need?”

Ryan shrugged helplessly. “I wish I fucking knew, Jon. I’m going to talk to Connor. Get her straightened up, if you can, but don’t let either Cutter or Hart see her until the drug wears off.”

“Neither of them are back yet. The car you heard was Claudia’s.”

Ryan glanced at his watch. It was now the best part of an hour since he’d phoned his lover. Ample time for Stephen to have got back here and joined the party.

So where the fuck was he?


	7. Chapter 7

Stephen stepped through the anomaly with the same sense of gut-wrenching fear he always felt. It never got any easier, no matter how many times he did this. But the wonder he felt at seeing the past spread out in front of him like the pages of a favourite book never got any less, either.

Behind him, Blade skidded to a halt, assault rifle held low, ready to fire from the hip, if necessary.

“Shit!” 

The soldier’s voice sounded almost reverent, and in spite of his own fears, Stephen grinned. He’d take the memory of his own first sight of the past to the grave with him like a cherished possession. That is if he died anywhere civilized enough to allow him a grave. Which considering his current occupation had to be in doubt, nine days out of ten.

A first scan of the area revealed no immediate threat. They were on a wide, rolling plain, flatter than the Lakeland Hills they’d just left behind. No grass, but ferns in abundance, large and small. Whenever they were had one thing in common with where they’d just come from, though… it was bloody well raining!

Stephen laughed. He couldn’t help himself. It was the first time any of them had ever stepped into the past and found it pissing down.

“Sir?” Blade’s voice was hesitant. “Where the fuck are we?”

“No idea, but the air’s breathable and nothing’s tried to rip our heads off so far, so it gets my vote as a destination.” Stephen slung his dart gun over his shoulder and started to scan the area with binoculars. “Cover me.”

Movement, at least a kilometre away, caught his eye. Something large and slow moving, maybe four metres long, four large feet firmly planted on the ground, which was always a plus in his book, small head, fat body, with a double row of spikes running along its spine to a gradually tapering tail.

He scanned further. There was actually a herd of somethings, trundling slowly into view, heads down, grazing as they ambled along. Smaller ones were grouped together in the middle of the herd.

He whistled through his teeth, wishing Connor was here. The student loved seeing baby dinosaurs so much that there were times when Stephen actually thought the lad was in danger of getting broody! 

Without speaking, Stephen handed the glasses to Blade.

A look of amazement and delight spread over the soldier’s face, wiping the hardness from his eyes. Connor clearly wasn’t the only one who liked the babies.

“Some sort of ankylosaurs,” said Stephen, answering the man’s unasked question. “Herbivores. Harmless, but don’t spook ‘em, and if you do, avoid the tail. If the kids came through here, there’s no sign of them, but give me ten minutes to cast around and see if I can find any tracks that don’t belong here. That lot over there are no danger, providing we keep out of their way and don’t try and approach their young, but I’m guessing this is the Cretaceous, so keep a good look out for predators.” an afterthought, he added, “Don’t just assume anything on two legs fits that description, there are browsers with smaller fore-legs as well.”

“I remember that lecture,” the soldier grinned, “but the Prof wasn’t too exact about how to tell the difference.”

“The herbivores don’t generally try to eat you,” said Stephen.

He glanced at his watch. They’d seen the anomaly appear less that ten minutes ago, almost immediately after he’d taken the call on his mobile from Ryan telling him to get back to the house. He’d tried to phone back, then to call Connor, but reception was crap in the area and seemed to come and go with no warning.

They’d decided to explore it anyway, not wanting to pass up any opportunity that presented itself. He just hoped they’d made the right decision, coming through without back-up.

Stephen finished checking his gun, then moved off at a fast, but steady pace.

The words, “Yell if it shows any sign of fading,” didn’t give the soldier much comfort as his companion rapidly drew away from him.

With the rifle hanging from a shoulder strap, Blade kept up his scan of the area, standing far enough away from the anomaly to be safe from the threat of losing his kit to the magnetic pull, but close enough so that he could keep an eye on it’s strength. He’d stood guard over enough of the shiny sods in his time in the Forest of Dean to have a good idea of when they were starting to fade, and at the moment, this one seemed as wickedly sharp as ever.

His old Gran had always warned him to keep an eye on the flashy ones, but somehow he didn’t think this was what she’d meant.

Hart covered the ground easily, stopping frequently to drop to one knee, movements fluid and graceful as he examined the soft ground. The guy knew his business, that was for sure. He wasn’t just a pretty face and a tight ass. He was the wrong sex, so far as the soldier was concerned, but it wasn’t hard to guess what the captain saw in him…

Stephen stopped so fast that his sudden movement had Blade reaching for his gun. A quick scan of the area confirmed there was no obvious threat, but by the time he’d dragged the binoculars back to the other man, the tracker was moving off again, this time at a fast walk.

Blade fiddled with his radio, cursing himself for having forgotten about it. “Dr. Hart? Can you hear me? What have you found?”

“Footprints.” The voice was crackly, but audible. “Stay where you are and keep looking. Scan out as far as you can see. These tracks are pretty fresh.”

The creatures continued their slow ramble across the wet plain. Stephen travelled somewhat faster. Blade’s heart followed suit, thudding in his chest. Had they found the kids and the teacher?

“Sir! How many?”

“Not enough,” came the reply, suddenly and startlingly clear. “Two… both kids… both running…then they stop and the tracks turn back on themselves…”

The hairs on the back of Blade’s neck started to prickle. He swung round, half expecting to see something with an over-sized smile heading his way… but what he did see made his blood run even colder, if that was possible…

“Sir… Sir! It’s fading, the fucking thing’s fading! Get back here now!”

He saw Hart stop, almost at the top of a small rise in the ground, turning round, indecision showing in every line of the lean, lithe body, then he dropped to one knee again, and Blade heard the breath hiss through the other man’s teeth.

“Chocolate wrapper, still got crumbs in it…. fresh…”

“Sir! For fuck’s sake, it’s fading!”

“Get back through it, now!” Hart’s voice sounded unnaturally calm in his ear.

“You have got to be fucking kidding! The captain’ll kill me! Dr. Hart, for the love of god, get back here now!”

The soldier saw Stephen pause, looking first back towards the now fading anomaly, then he shook his head and moved on, up the rise.

The voice in Blade’s ear could have come from next to him, it was so clear. “There’s another anomaly here somewhere, they didn’t come through ours…. but if I’m wrong, tell Ryan… tell him… tell him I love him and tell him I’m sorry, OK?”

Blade looked round, eyes frantic, gauging time, distance….self-preservation warring with duty. If he lived to be a hundred, which right now seemed a vanishingly remote possibility, he’d never know which impulse actually won…

The soldier grabbed a large rock and hurled it through the dancing light, three seconds before it winked out of existence, as tauntingly ephemeral as a will o’ the wisp.

“Tell him yourself, sir,” he sighed.

* * *

The tracks stopped abruptly. Two sets of footprints just went…nowhere.

Stephen looked up into the face of the man who, right now, was quite probably the only other human being on the planet. The soldier was younger than him by maybe five or six years. Dark hair, cropped short. Good looking, with a wide mouth that under other circumstances could slide easily into a cheerful grin, a permanent five o’clock shadow and the most vivid green eyes that Stephen had ever seen.

“I’m sorry,” Stephen said, quietly.

Blade sighed. “Not your fault, sir. I had the chance to make it through, but you couldn’t have got back in time, even if you’d tried. My choice, and I made it. No point in crying about it now. So what’re our chances?”

The expression on Stephen’s face was bleak. “Of surviving, or of finding another anomaly?”

The other man laughed and to Stephen’s amazement, the guy sounded genuinely amused. “We’ll survive all right. We’ve enough ammunition to stand a siege, and I’ve got my knives, so we won’t starve. I meant what are the chances of getting home?”

Stephen grinned. “I wish I knew,” and for some reason he couldn’t have explained even if he’d tried, now that the worst had happened, he wasn’t afraid any more, just strangely light-headed. “Go on, admit it, you just didn’t want to take that message back, did you?” His grin became somewhat lop-sided and more than a little embarrassed. “Sorry about the hearts and flowers moment.”

The soldier ran a hand through his short, spiky hair and returned the grin, “No offence intended, sir, but there’s no way I was going back to tell the captain that I’d upped and left his boyfriend behind, umpteen million years in the past. I might be crazy but I’m not fucking suicidal.”

Stephen started to laugh. “Let’s hope you’re right,” he said, wiping a hand across his face and staring around him at a rain-soaked world that he suddenly realised they might never leave. “Get your compass out, and we’ll see what we can find.”

“A bar wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Sod it, don’t tell me we both forgot to bring the beer?”

Blade grinned. There were two cans in the bottom of his pack. Maybe he’d save them for when they really needed cheering up.

* * *

They’d taken up station on the top of the highest ridge the area had to offer. The plan, if you could call it a plan, was to keep both anomaly sites under surveillance, while they also scanned as wide an area as possible.

It was still raining, and they both knew that it would get bloody cold when they finally lost the light. The large fronded fern they’d found gave scant protection from the constant drizzle, but it was also reasonably well placed next to a stand of spindly trees, which could be climbed to a reasonable height, should the need arise.

They had full water bottles and Blade had manufactured a means of refilling them from a piece of plastic he’d rigged up as a makeshift catchment. It was too wet to make a fire, but they had enough energy bars between them for at least three days if they needed them. Ryan’s lot clearly believed in travelling prepared. After that, if they were still here, they could start hunting.

“Sir?” Blade’s voice sounded wary.

Stephen stirred from his nest at the base of the fern. They’d been taking it in turns to watch, one hour on, one hour off.

“There’s a pack of somethings heading down the ridge, not in our direction, but I don’t like the look of them…”

That was all it took to bring Stephen to feet, grabbing for the binoculars. His companion was right, they moved like predators, not like the herbivores they’d spent the last few hours watching. Faster, more agile, their narrow heads leant forwards, weight carefully poised on powerful hind legs, ready to run… to chase…

It was difficult to be sure of their colour in the fading light, but they blended in all too well with the greens and browns of the landscape around them.

“Not unusual for predators to hunt at dusk,” muttered Stephen, “and I don’t like the look of yours, by the way, she’s ugly.”

“Thanks, I’ll remember that. If they attack, can I kill ‘em?”

“You can try,” breathed Stephen, “but I don’t want to attract their attention, right now, OK?”

The soldier nodded. He knew the drill. And he didn’t want to waste bullets. They weren’t a renewable resource around here.

In the next ten minutes, they watched the pack approach the herd of ankylosaurs, getting surprising close before the herbivores finally spooked and ran. Then in a scene that only lacked a commentary by Sir David Attenborough, the two men watched one of the stragglers ruthlessly brought down and killed in only a matter of minutes.

“Never did like wildlife films,” muttered Blade, looking away at the last moment.

A second later, the soldier stiffened, breath hissing between his teeth.

Stephen’s sideways glance told him all he needed to know. Moving slowly and carefully, he reached out for the dart gun, still propped up against the bole of the huge branching fern tree. He fumbled carefully in the pouch of his belt, going for a large, fast acting dose. Killing the creatures was still a last resort, as far as he was concerned.

“Juveniles,” he breathed quietly. “Cover the one on the left. I’m going to try dropping his chum. If we’re lucky, the noise will scare the other one off. If it doesn’t, give me a chance at a second shot, if you can.”

The two young dinosaurs stared at the men, heads cocked to one side, large nostrils flared, scenting the damp air. They each easily outweighed the two men, standing nearly two metres tall at the shoulder, easily double that in length.

Stephen took careful aim, still hoping against hope that the two creatures would just turn round and wander quietly off, back the way they’d come. He knew perfectly well that any noise would carry for miles in the still, quiet of the evening air, and there was no sound in the world more guaranteed to draw the attention of the adults of any species than the cry of a youngster in distress, and no matter how fast-acting the tranquillizer was, nothing worked that fast.

The smaller of the two dipped its head, sniffing, then took a tentative step forward.

The larger one side-stepped and sunk down slightly on its powerful haunches.

“Sir, I think it’s going to…”

The gunshot was so loud that even the predators tearing into the body of the dead ankylosaur stopped and looked up.

The dart took the young predator in the chest as it launched itself at the two men. Stephen side-stepped, already re-loading.

Blade fired a short burst from his assault rifle, aiming into the air. The muzzle flash caused both of the dinosaurs to jump back and sideways, away from the noise, away from the sudden spit of fire.

Stephen’s second dart found its target, a long, outstretched neck. The carnosaur shook its head and reached up with a forelimb to scratch at the intrusion.

“Again!” breathed Stephen. “They don’t like the flashes.”

Blade obeyed instantly, but this time, the smaller of the two creatures let out a high-pitched scream, then it took off, in the direction of the main pack, down the slope. The other followed, making the same noise.

Their long, bounding strides soon became erratic.

The larger one stumbled and fell, still keening loudly.

The adults started to move, running towards the noise, not away from it.

Blade grabbed Stephen’s sleeve, “Time to go, sir. If we’re lucky, they’ll be more concerned with their young than they are with us, now come on! I don’t want to hang around long enough to meet mummy and daddy.”

Stephen turned and together they started up the slope, running into the shadow of the trees. Into the fading light.

A shadow moved, then another. Blade swerved, firing from the hip, still aiming high, in spite of the situation. Shadows rose out of the ferns, all round them. Shadows with teeth. Shadows that didn’t seem to give a flying fuck about the noise and muzzle flashes.

Stephen dragged the Browning free of its holster, still running, then a high pitched whine rose up from their left, and just for an instant, the rustling of the ferns stopped and the massive predators cocked heads to one side, huge nostrils flaring as they considered the most basic of all options : fight or flight.

The whine stopped.

The dinosaurs started moving again.

Stephen and Blade kept running.

A voice yelled, “Oi, over here, this won’t stop them for long, the battery’s nearly flat!”

A child’s voice.

To be more precise, a young girl’s voice.

The two men hesitated just long enough to trade stunned looks, then the pair of them plunged through the ferns, past the equally stunned predators, and towards the flickering light, hanging in the air no more than ten metres away.

With less than two metres to go, Blade stumbled, his foot catching on a rock. Teeth closed almost instantly on his leg, biting straight through the leather of his boot, slicing into flesh with the ease of a cut-throat razor. He twisted, bringing the rifle round and firing.

The bullets took his attacker high in the chest, but the creature still hung on to him.

Jaws like a fuckin’ pitbull…

A split-second judgment saw Stephen ramming the pistol into the back of his jeans, swinging the tranquillizer gun round and firing. In a fluke shot, the dart took the dinosaur straight up one nostril.

Whether it was that which did the trick or the high pitched whine that split the night air again, the injured soldier couldn’t say, but either way, the massive jaws suddenly let go of his leg. Hands grabbed him under the shoulders and heaved, and seconds later he was rolling with Stephen onto short, sun-bleached grass, gasping with pain under a strong, almost impossibly bright sun.

A blonde haired child of about ten stared down at him.

A boy, maybe a year or so older, stood shoulder to shoulder with her, fiddling with a small device in his hands. The whine stopped abruptly and the boy gave them both a wide grin and a thumbs up sign.

“They won’t follow us through,” the girl announced. “They don’t like the noise and the light.” She looked both of them up and down, her appraising stare suddenly very, very familiar. “Did my Dad send you?”

Blade grinned and left it to Stephen to reply.

“Miss Victoria Ryan, I presume?”

“It’s Thornton, now,” the girl said. “Mum changed it. He did send you, didn’t he?” There was no mistaking the relief her voice. She swept an encompassing hand at a scene very closely resembling the Spaghetti Junction of anomalies that Stephen had seen once before when he’d been in pursuit of a fleeing Helen Cutter. “So which one gets us home?” At the look of dismay on Stephen’s face, her own expression dropped heavily. In a tone wholly reminiscent of her father’s, she muttered, “Oh bugger.”

Which just about summed it up, in Blade’s opinion.


	8. Chapter 8

Claudia stared out of the window into the gathering mist. The light was already failing and would be gone within the hour. Conditions out there were disgusting, to put it mildly. To make matters worse, they had too many possible sites to watch and not enough people to cover them.

Before the rest of the team had headed out onto the fells again, Lyle and D.C .I. Richards had seriously considered calling on the local Mountain Rescue team for help. Knowing what Lester would think of that idea, she’d begged them to do their best for now with the available resources, but if the weather continued to be a foul as this, they’d need more back up, whether Lester liked it or not.

“Are you really intending to leave me like this, Claudia?”

The words cut into her thoughts like razor wire.

Helen Cutter’s eyes were bright with malice as she stared challengingly at the younger woman.

Claudia simply nodded, refusing to let either uncertainty or unease show on her face. She’d been around Cutter’s team long enough by now to know that you didn’t display weakness in front of a predator. And Helen Cutter was a predator, Claudia had no doubt about that, even though part of her was still mentally questioning whether it had been entirely necessary for Lyle to handcuff the woman’s hands behind her back.

She was trying not to think about what would happen if Helen claimed to need the toilet. Lyle had warned her to watch out for that trick. With that in mind, Claudia decided not to offer the woman a drink. Not just yet, anyway.

The outside door opened and Amanda Thornton came back into the house, water dripping off her anorak.

“Does that lad out there get his professional paranoia from my ex-husband, or is there still something you aren’t telling me, Claudia?”

“Stephen thought your dog might have been attacked by something other than a fox,” said Claudia, deciding honesty was probably the best policy on this occasion. “He found some tracks near the bushes that he couldn’t identify, so the soldiers have been ordered to keep a careful watch around here as well.”

“Stephen’s an excellent tracker,” added Helen, addressing her remark to the blonde woman, with a smile that no-one could have mistaken for being either helpful or friendly. “He’s also your ex-husband’s boyfriend. Did anyone bother to tell you that?”

Claudia sighed. “Shut up, Helen.”

“It’s hardly surprising you divorced Ryan, Mrs. Thornton,” Helen continued, throwing a venomous look at Claudia. “But what would you think if I told you he’d tried to rape me earlier? Over there, in your cottage.”

Claudia’s breath hissed involuntarily through her nose. To her amazement, Amanda Thornton simply gave Helen a hard look, then laughed. The silence that followed was broken a moment later by the sudden whistle of the kettle on the range.

“Tea, Mrs. Cutter?” When the other woman didn’t reply, Amanda continued. “Yes, it would surprise me, actually, for all sorts of reasons, none of which I feel terribly inclined to share with you…”

Before she could continue, the noise of a rifle shot echoed round the yard, drowning out the whine of the kettle. The three women jumped. A second shot followed quickly, then a short, sharp burst of automatic fire shattered the air.

Helen Cutter came to her feet in an instant, reacting marginally faster than either of the other women. “Get these cuffs off me, Claudia!”

“Sit down and stay there,” retorted Claudia, already moving towards the door.

Amanda Thornton thrust an arm out at Helen and made the same point rather more forcefully. “You’re not going anywhere, lady, not while my daughter is still missing.”

Helen sat down abruptly, propelled by a well manicured hand. If the gun shots hadn’t acted as a very effective antidote to humour, Claudia would have been half inclined to laugh.

Another burst of gunfire brought her own movement to an abrupt halt. Stepping outside unprepared suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. She stared round, looking for a weapon of some sort. A knife block on the work surface drew her attention.

Amanda shook her head and handed over a long handled frying pan instead.

Claudia hefted its comforting weight and grinned. Ryan’s wife might be a prize bitch, but she clearly had a practical streak a mile wide.

She opened the door cautiously, peering out into the mist now blanketing the yard. “Kermit?” A high-pitched keening noise answered her. Somewhere over to her left. “Kermit? Report, please?” The noise wasn’t coming from a human throat, she was certain of that.

A second cry picked up where the first one left off, sending a shiver down Claudia’s neck. Gripping the handle of the pan harder, she took a tentative step outside the door.

She could see sweet sod all in the low lying mist, barely able to make out the two guest cottages on the far side of the yard. “Amanda, can you turn some lights on out here?”

The muted yellow glow that flicked on in reply did little to improve her vision, the light was cast back at her eyes, much like trying to drive in fog on full headlights.

Something moved in the mist. Claudia swung round to the left. “Kermit?”

A hiss greeted her and something hit her knees, moving fast, moving past her, leaving pain blossoming behind in its wake. Claudia looked down, too shocked even to cry out as she saw a long rip in her trouser leg. She knew, even before the blood appeared, that there was also a corresponding tear in her flesh, and then the world exploded again in gunfire.

The muzzle flash from an assault rifle tore through the mist, and the command, “Get back inside!” was barely audible over the noise.

She hesitated a moment too long and something hit her again, this time taking her legs out from under her. She handed heavily, the breath knocked from her lungs. Hands grabbed her under the arms and hauled her inside the door. Claudia wheezed, still clutching the heavy frying pan in one hand.

“What happened?” Amanda Thornton’s voice was sharp, but with no trace of panic.

Claudia shook her head, still gasping.

Helen Cutter surveyed the scene without speaking, but her dark eyes were wary as they lingered on the still open door.

Ryan’s ex-wife grabbed another frying pan and made her way cautiously to the door, taking the precaution of pushing a chair out in front of her.

The sight that greeted her made her throw caution to the winds. The soldier, Kermit, they called him, was backing across the yard, rifle held low at the hip as he held off a pack of creatures that looked rather improbably like a flock of gigantic, vicious chickens. They were waist height on the soldier, maybe twice as long as they were tall, but it was difficult to tell, as they moved fast, circling, darting, slashing with both teeth and hind claws.

Blood spurted from his thigh and a curse echoed loudly in the yard. The soldier went down on one knee, bullets spraying from the rifle.

She was certain the damn things had actually dodged aside, as the bullets missed all but one of them, then they dived in again, heads outstretched, hissing like angry badgers, jaws – beaks? – aiming for the man’s unprotected face.

Amanda yelled, and threw the chair with as much force as she could muster. It fell well short, but the clatter of wood on the flagged yard was loud enough to draw their attention and one of the creatures darted forward, grabbing at the chair like a dog pouncing on a stick.

Without stopping to think, she dived after it, swiping hard with the iron pan. It struck a head with a satisfying thwuck and the owner of a pair of nasty looking jaws went flying sideways, taking the remains of the chair with it.

The high-pitched ululation started again on all sides, sharp with menace.

She noticed the soldier was now holding the rifle one handed. The other dangled limply at his side, blood dripping onto the flags from his gloveless hand. The glove itself was dangling from the jaws of one of the things.

A short burst of gunfire took two of the beasts in the chest, blood, and something that looked not unlike feathers spraying out into the mist, then the man was scrambling to his feet, limping heavily as he backed towards her, firing now on single shot only, even though the creatures looked like they were about to mob him.

“Clip ain’t gonna last!” he panted, “Can’t change it one handed, not with this lot about to jump us. Get back inside! But don’t run, or the fuckers’ll bring us both down.”

Something bright and hard flew overhead, landing almost next to one of the creatures. It sprang backwards, distracted for a moment from the injured man. A second missile followed the first.

Claudia Brown, propped against the doorway, keeping the weight off her injured leg, was hurling stainless steel pans to good effect.

Amanda Thornton darted forward, swinging the frying pan in wide, sweeping arcs. One of their attackers misjudged a lunge and was knocked off its feet, a second was more successful and Amanda felt teeth rake her thigh.

A final spray of bullets chattered into the air as Kermit muttered, “That’s all I’ve got! Time to go ……..”

Another pan flashed past his shoulder, and as one, he and Amanda turned and ran, or rather limped, the last few metres to the open door.

Claudia jammed it shut behind them and reached with shaking hands for the large, old fashioned iron key. Something hit the outside of the door with a heavy thump and a noise that sounded suspiciously like a frustrated squawk.

“Whatever they are, I don’t like them,” said the soldier, as his injured leg gave way and he slid to the floor, leaving a smear of bright red blood down the side of a kitchen unit.

“A flock of over-sized chickens with a grudge against humanity,” said Claudia, white-faced, trying to stop the trembling in her hands against the edge of the kitchen table.

“I’m a vegetarian,” muttered Amanda, “but even I think that lot would look better cooked.” She stared down at Kermit, “How bad are you?”

“Left arm’s fucked,” he grimaced. “There’s a spare clip in the pouch on my belt. Can you get it?”

Ignoring the blood staining the tiled floor, Amanda fumbled with the pouch, and with hands that shook almost as much as Claudia’s, she proceeded to change the magazine herself.

The young soldier’s eyes widened in surprise.

“I was married to Ryan for nine years,” she said, slamming the clip home, and double-checking the safety, before handing the weapon back to the injured soldier. A pair of frightened blue eyes fixed themselves on Helen Cutter. “You were looking out of the window. What are they?”

“Dangerous.”

“Very clever. Now are you going to help or not?” Amanda demanded, hating the fact that her voice seemed to be shaking as much as her hands.

“Are you going to untie my hands or not?”

“Not yet,” Claudia interposed, surprising herself when she realized she’d managed to speak without her voice breaking, even though the pain from her injured leg was threatening what was left of her rapidly failing composure. “What are they, Helen?”

“Theropods, of some sort,” the woman offered, dismissively

“Like the things in the Crowll, but smaller,” grunted Kermit, his face contorting with pain as he tried to struggle to his feet. “They’ve got the hind leg claw like the deinonychus. And they’re bright. Sodding bright.”

“Oh, they’re bright, alright,” said Helen, with something approaching a smirk in her voice. “Fortunate they became extinct really. You were lucky they didn’t get the chance to grab your face, Darren. You wouldn’t have survived that.”

“The policewoman didn’t,” said Kermit, his eyes bleak.


	9. Chapter 9

“No way, Professor, just no way.”

Nick Cutter grinned. “Just one quick look?”

They’d taken the track as far as the farm, leaving their police escort behind to do the talking while they’d headed off along the footpath leading to the tarn. The anomaly had been visible almost as soon as they’d crested the last rise. It was hanging in the air, above an outcrop of rock, flickering in the low cloud. Then more mist had swirled around and for a second it seemed almost to have vanished.

“It’s getting weaker.” Finn’s voice carried a note of pleading.

The soldier was right, and Cutter knew it. Discretion, on this occasion at least, was clearly the better part of valor.

It had taken them nearly half an hour to reach their current position, and in that time, the glow had clearly started to fade and it wasn’t just the cloaking effect of the mist and the rain. The anomaly was definitely losing its strength. And Cutter had no mind to be stuck on the wrong side when it did finally lose its grip on the present.

So he stood and watched, with mounting frustration, as one of the ever-fascinating windows on the past diminished and disappeared. “Too bloody late,” he muttered.

“I reckon it’ll be back,” said Finn.

Cutter swung his head round sharply, and saw the thoughtful expression on the soldier’s narrow face. He raised his eyebrows. “And your evidence for that is?”

Finn pointed across the rough pasture land of the Lakeland Hills. “There’s a fence round that outcrop but there’s no gate in it. And there’s no sheep on this part of the fells. We’ve seen sheep everywhere else on the drive over here, but this guy’s got his sheep in that bloody great big barn off the yard. I was brought up in the country, sir. The weather’s foul, but I know sheep and I know you don’t keep Herdwicks penned inside, not even when it’s as bad as this. Not unless you’ve a reason that goes beyond weather conditions.”

In spite of his frustration, Cutter grinned. “Then let’s go talk to their owner.”

As they walked back down into the farmyard the two men could see the farmer, a stocky individual almost as broad as he was tall, leaning against the door of his barn. The man watched them approach, his expression guarded, but unsurprised.

Nick very much doubted that the police marksman after a rogue dog excuse had cut any ice with him at all.

“It’s no weather to be lookin’ fer… dogs, that’s fer sure,” commented the man, a gleam of something suspiciously like amusement in his dark eyes. “But at any rate, yer wastin’ yer time, ain’t had no trouble from dogs round ‘ere, not in a long while.”

“So what have you had trouble from?” Cutter asked, quietly.

“Foot and Mouth… buggers who can’t close gates… idiots from MAFF… You name it, we’ve ‘ad trouble from it. An’ some types of trouble are easier to handle than others, as no doubt you gentlemen know, but me, I just fences it in. Seems safest that way.”

“So when’s it going to re-appear, Mr…?”

The look in the other man’s eyes was as sharp as broken glass and as bright as an anomaly. “Skelton. Raymond Skelton. Give it a couple of hours and it’ll be back, but I doubt we’ll see it much after tomorrow. Last time it was this active was nigh on eight years ago. It lasted two days then, flickering on and off like a ruddy great big Christmas tree light. Same as it’s been doin’ fer a day an’ a half now.” He sucked in a long breath, before declaring, “You’ll be after the kids, I take it?”

Nick Cutter met the man’s eyes and smiled. “Aye, we are. So what can you tell us that’ll help, Mr. Skelton?”

The look he got in return was flint hard. “Find ‘em quick, while you can still get through and back. And while you’re at it, find out why they’m went into it the first place. Annie Lowe’s a sensible lass. She’d not have gone just for a bit o’ fun. So I’d be asking meself why, if I were you.”

Nick cursed under his breath, and grabbed his phone.

“No signal,” said the young policeman who’d driven them to the farm, seeing the look of frustration on the Professor’s face. “You’ll not find a land line here either. So where do you want to go next?”

* * * * *

Connor looked down at the flickering compass in his hand, watching the needle wave erratically. He sighed, pensively. “Try your radio again, will you, mate?”

Ditzy looked puzzled but tried, all the same. And failed.

“What have we just proved?” he asked, as a wide grin spread over Connor’s face.

“Something we already knew. Something we’ve known for ages, and we’ve never followed it up. Like I said at the house, the radios are always fouling up in the Forest of Dean. They’re doing the same here. We need to test this systematically. We need more data.”

It was Ditzy’s turn to sigh. That was the problem when it came to working with bloody scientists. They always needed more data. “We actually need to find Stephen, which is why we came out here in the first place, remember?”

Connor reluctantly dragged his attention away from the compass. “He’s not here, and all we got from his phone, when we did have a bloody signal, was This user’s mobile is not in service.”

“So we get soaked to the fucking skin on yet another cold wet hillside looking for another needle in a haystack. Same as before.” In irritation, the medic took a swing with his foot at a large rock. “Or we could just start yelling and see if that does any good. It seems to be the only sodding method of communication left round here that might work.”

The younger man shot him a sympathetic look. The soldiers didn’t like it when their toys went wrong. And people called him a geek!

The offending rock found itself on the receiving end of a second kick and at the same time, something clicked in Connor’s mind. He knelt down on the wet grass and flipped the rock over, muttering under his breath.

“Leaving no stone unturned?” Ditzy sounded amused, in spite of his frustration.

Connor looked up, dark eyes thoughtful. “Look at this and then at the ground around here. Tell me what you see.” The soldier opened his mouth to protest, and was forestalled by a wave of the younger man’s hand. “No, don’t argue. Tell me what you see.”

Ditzy stared around him, his normally easy going manner gone in an instant, buried beneath a mantle of detached professionalism.

“Looks to me like it’s been thrown from somewhere… from further up, maybe…yeah, look… bounced a bit there,” he pointed to a spot a few feet up the hillside. “…landed, then rolled about two metres down the slope, towards us. So what’s your point, Connor?”

“There’s been an anomaly here, the compass activity proves that. So does the fact that the radios are giving us nothing but static crackle That rock doesn’t come from round here. I’ve done enough geology to know that. It isn’t native to this hillside, so how did it get here?”

“Someone chucked it through an anomaly?” hazarded Ditzy, with a look that spoke volumes. He really didn’t like where this conversation was heading.

Connor nodded. “Someone who didn’t think he had enough time to get through himself, but still wanted to try and get something back. Something that we’d see. I think I know why we can’t raise ‘em, mate.”

Ditzy flipped open his phone. Telling Ryan that his boyfriend was now stuck in the past as well as his kid wasn’t the medic’s idea of fun. The captain was likely be a tad hard on the bearer of news like that. “Still no signal,” he said, with something approaching relief in his voice.

He put his hand to his ear, trying the radio out of long habit.

Connor could hear the buzz of static from where he was standing. If anything, it was worse. He looked down at the compass again. This time the needle wasn’t just flickering, it was spinning, first clock-wise, then anti-clockwise.

“Watch your gun!” he yelled, a few scant seconds before an anomaly opened, no more than four metres away from them.

The instruction saved Ditzy’s rifle from the sudden magnetic tug, but it didn’t stop Connor from losing his own phone through the rough circle of shattered light. Crap. Lester always snarked about bills for replacement phones. He’d already told Connor that he’d prefer him to find another method of getting an upgrade. One that wasn’t funded by the taxpayer.

The anomaly winked, blinked and closed again, before either of the men had chance to speak.

“OK, that’s a first,” said Connor, looking unhappy. “Come on, we need to find Cutter.”

* * * * *

Greg Thornton drove up through the Kentmere valley like the proverbial Hounds of Hell were on his tail, which, round here, he’d decided, was an all too likely scenario. Even though here the bloody things probably wouldn’t have fur, but from what he’d heard, they would be well-endowed with teeth.

“So how long have you been riding shotgun for this lot?” he asked, conversationally, as he took a cattle grid at something approaching 50 mph.

Ryan winced out of sympathy for the vehicle’s suspension, whilst simultaneously admiring the man’s driving.

In the back, Lyle braced himself, seeing a tight bend in the track coming up, and wondering whether he should mention it.

“Best part of six months,” said Ryan, eyes fixed ahead.

Greg drove his foot down on the accelerator rather than the brake. “So you know what all this is about?”

Ryan shook his head. “Nope. It’d make life easier if we did. Would probably have lost less lads, as well.”

The car took the bend in a barely controlled skid. Lyle flinched and his foot stabbed at an imaginary brake.

“And is the Government going to tell us what’s going on?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ryan admitted.

“Then they’ve got a lot in common with the bloody locals, although I doubt either side would care to admit it,” muttered Greg, swerving a few metres off the track to avoid a surprised looking sheep.

Five minutes later, he brought the vehicle to a halt next to a ruined cottage. 

Calum Richard pulled his car off the track behind them. “Speeding tickets are in the post,” he muttered, taking a quick look to see if his exhaust pipe was still in place.

“Repeat, Professor!” demanded Ryan, grinning at the look on the policeman’s face. The soldier held the phone to his ear, clearly having trouble making out what was being said. “I’m getting one word in three! Say again!” Two minutes later he flipped the phone closed. His face grim. “Reception’s still shite. Cutter says he’s with Connor. Something about Hart and an anomaly. Another one up by the tarn has just closed. Seems to think the things are getting weaker. Told us to watch ourselves. There was more, but I couldn’t catch it.” He glared at both the phone and the police inspector. “How the fuck do you lot work round here? Comms are a sodding nightmare.”

Calum Richards shrugged. “There are times when it’s worse than others and the bad weather doesn’t help. Causes the Rescue Teams a few headaches as well. Speaking of which, are you sure we couldn’t do with more back-up?”

Ryan glanced at Lyle. 

The lieutenant shook his head. “Lester says no, and I’m inclined to agree with him. We’re spread too thinly, but more people won’t help. It’ll just give us more bodies to keep track of. With no effective comms network, we’re having enough trouble as it is. More bodies will just make it worse.”

Ryan watched Lyle rubbing the finger and thumb of his right hand together in an unconscious gesture that he’d seen all too frequently over the years.

The captain threw the boot of the car open, grabbed an assault rifle and threw it at the policeman. “I presume you know how to use it?”

D.C.I. Richards checked the safety catch, slid the magazine out, checked it was full, rammed it home and nodded. “Not exactly standard issue at Hendon, but I won’t blow my own foot off.”

“It’s not your feet we’re worried about, mate,” grinned Lyle, handing the other man four spare clips. “Give me two minutes to tool up properly and I’ll follow you. I’m going to have one last go at raising the others by phone. I had one bar back at the last corner. It’s worth a try.”

Ryan nodded and without a word, turned to head up to the anomaly site. The other two men followed.

Lyle stared down at his phone and hit Cutter’s name on the dial list as he walked back down the track, in search of that illusive signal.

No luck.

He tried the number for the Thornton’s house.

The same.

Connor.

Nothing.

With mounting frustration, he dialed another number, which, to his amazement, met with success.

“Lyle? Where the fuck are you? I’ve just been talking to Cutter.”

“Nice to hear you too, sweetie,” the Special Forces lieutenant muttered. “I’m in Kentmere, it’s getting dark and mobile reception is close to useless. Ryan’s just taken a call from Cutter but…”

“How’s he taking it?” Even the crackle on the line failed to disguise the concern in Lester’s voice.

The hairs on the back of Lyle’s neck started to rise. “How’s who taking what?”

“How’s Ryan taking the news that he’s now got a boyfriend stuck in the past as well as a daughter?”

“Oh fuck.” Talk about an op turning to rat shit.

“That about sums it up,” said Lester, heavily, answering both his lover’s spoken, and unspoken thoughts. “I presume you’re not just phoning for a chat, Jon?”

“I was actually dialing any number I could find that worked. I need someone to coordinate this crappy fucking job. Next on the list was Great Aunt Ethel. Come to think of it, Auntie Ethel might have been a better bet, she worked at Bletchley during the war …”

In spite of the situation, Lester snorted a laugh. “OK, point taken. Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

“Tell Cutter and Connor to get their arses back to the house. We’ve too many people spread half way around the bloody countryside, and I don’t like it.” Plus the fact that Cutter might manage to get something out of his bitch of a wife where we failed. “Tell them to call your office every fifteen minutes from there. I don’t want them out of contact if we can help it.” He fell silent a moment, listening, then continued, “Make them understand. I don’t care how you do it, just get Cutter to follow orders for once in his bloody life. I’ve got a bad feeling coming on, so just humour me. I’ll check in again if I can. If you hear nothing from me in two hours, send Stringer and his lads up here by the faster method. Got that? I don’t sodding care if there’s a herd of fucking T rex in the Forest …my thumbs are itching fit to bust, and if you won’t do it, I really will ring Auntie Ethel… OK?” Lyle listened again, then laughed. “Yes, darling, I’ll try. Love you too.” 

With that, Lyle sighed, rammed the phone into a pocket of his tac vest and started methodically loading up with as much hardwear and ammunition as he could carry.

He really was starting to have a very, very, bad feeling about all of this.

Lester’s news about Stephen Hart hadn’t helped, but right now, he was just glad that Cutter hadn’t managed to pass that little gem onto Ryan. In Lyle’s view, it was time to start operating on a need to know principle. 

And Ryan sure as hell didn’t need to know that particular fact just yet.


	10. Chapter 10

Stephen knew the kids claimed that the creatures wouldn’t follow them through the anomaly, but he wasn’t convinced, preferring to keep the maximum distance possible between himself and a pack of rampaging meat-eaters. In his experience, hungry predators could be surprisingly tenacious, especially when they’d already tasted the blood of their quarry.

He dropped quickly to the ground next to the injured soldier. The torn flesh on Blade’s lower leg looked nasty, but the guy was as hard as nails and Stephen didn’t waste his breath asking whether he could walk on it. The answer would be yes, no matter how badly the leg had been mauled.

And it was bad, there was no disguising that.

His stomach turned slightly at the sight of flesh ripped down to the bone, hanging off in strips.

They weren’t equipped to deal with an injury of this magnitude. The best Blade could hope for was a couple of painkillers and a makeshift bandage. Predator bites were notorious for becoming infected, but it would be nice to have sufficient life expectancy to worry about complications like septicaemia.

Stephen glanced up into a pair of pale blue eyes. “How many of these things have you been through, Vicky?”

“Declan’s kept notes,” Victoria Thornton replied, nodding at the boy next to her, and miming writing with her hand. The boy nodded and pulled a battered notebook out of his pocket. “You can see them later. We need to get back to the others now. Becky’ll patch your friend up. Her mum’s a doctor.”

She looked down at the injured soldier, seeing the pain twisting his face as he tried to struggle to his feet and just for a second, the hard mask of competence slipped, revealing a frightened ten year old.

Blade reached up and brushed a strand of greasy blonde hair back from a dirty, scratched forehead. Christ, both kids looked like they’d been sleeping rough for a month, not just a night.

“Thanks, miss, that sounds good.” With Stephen’s help, Blade managed to get upright, one arm looped round the other man’s shoulders. “So which way?” the soldier asked.

Vicky nodded to her companion and the boy set off towards an anomaly about ten metres away, gesturing to the others to follow him.

“Have you got any double AA batteries in there?” the girl asked, as Stephen swung Blade’s pack up onto his other shoulder.

The soldier looked surprised, but nodded. “Got some in a torch. Why?”

“We need them for Declan’s hearing aid. That’s what we were using to keep the creatures off you. They don’t like the whine, but the batteries are nearly dead, and there’s only one set left back at the camp.”

Camp? Blade glanced at his companion, eyebrows raised. Stephen shrugged. Neither of the men had the faintest idea how to deal with a pair of kids who seemed to know way more about what was going on around here than they did, but somehow the idea of playing Twenty Questions when there was still a pack of meat-eating somethings just on the other side of an anomaly still only a scant few metres away didn’t seem like that good an idea.

As they made their way as quickly as they could after the two children, Stephen noticed that Vicky Thornton had a large machete hanging from the belt of her very dirty, very torn jeans.

In fact, on closer examination, both kids bore an all too marked resemblance to actors in a scene from The Lord of The Flies.

“Vicky?” The girl turned round and raised her eyebrows. Stephen’s heart did a quick back-flip. Christ, the kid had a look of Ryan about her. “How long have you been here?”

The girl frowned. Another gesture straight out of his lover’s manual of non-verbal communication. “Ten days, give or take a couple, maybe.” She shot both men a sharp look. “You didn’t say whether my Dad sent you or not.”

Stephen nodded absently, his brain still floundering in reaction her previous statement.

Ten days?

“Well, you took your bloody time,” she snapped and with a toss of her filthy hair, the girl marched on towards the chosen anomaly, but not before Stephen had seen a tell-tale tremor in her lower lip and a flash of moisture in two defiant blue eyes.

“Don’t ask me, chum,” muttered Blade, with a helpless shrug, as he limped after the two children, “but she’s her father’s daughter, that’s for sure.”

* * * * *

Annie Lowe handed over a tin mug full of dark, steaming liquid that smelled mouth wateringly like coffee.

Stephen took it from her, still watching in fascination as a twelve year old girl tied a very professional looking bandage around Blade’s lower leg. She’d also cleaned the nasty wound left behind by the predators serrated teeth without so much as flinching.

The girl sat back on her heels and tossed a long, untidy ponytail back over one shoulder. “You’re getting the last of the sugar,” she told Blade. “Don’t know whether it’s true or not, but my mum always says it’s good for shock.”

“You’re Becky and your mum’s a doctor, right?”

The girl nodded.

Her teacher watched with the ghost of a smile, and a bucket load of pride. “Becky’s our medic.” Annie Lowe’s smile broadened at the incredulous look on Stephen’s face. “Don’t underestimate children, Mr. Hart.” She pointed at her left wrist, which was firmly bandaged, splinted and held up in a sling. “This got broken in our first encounter with a dinosaur. Some sort of ceratopsian, according to Declan. It seemed friendly, I tried to pet it, it head-butted me and broke my wrist. Lesson learnt the hard way, but it happened to me, not to one of the children. Becky got the bone back into place. Josh worked out what drugs to give me. He was the only one who knew the names on the packets in the medical store.”

She gestured with her head to a series of large plastic boxes on a rough shelf at the back of the rock overhang that served as a shelter.

Stephen returned her smile. “Don’t tell me, his Dad’s a chemist? And Vicky’s dad’s a soldier, so she was out on recon.”

Annie Lowe grinned. “You’re getting the hang of it. So, if you’ve come to rescue us, when can we expect to get out of here?”

“They don’t know,” said Vicky, from her position at the edge of a four metre drop. “They didn’t come in through the original Star Gate. They came from the Big Critter Zone.” She glanced across at Blade and grinned. “You two really picked a bad place to arrive. It’s packed with those buggers. We thought it was nice, too, when we first looked through. Lots of grazers and a lovely big open plain. Next time we looked it was night-time and the place was stiff with hunters. That was when Declan discovered they didn’t like the noise he can get his amplifier to make.”

Stephen stared at the girl all too conscious of the fact that he seemed to have contributed very little to any of these exchanges. For would-be rescuers, they hadn’t exactly covered themselves in glory so far. He wondered if they’d survive long enough to live down the fact that they’d been rescued by a couple of kids, who, with six companions their own age or thereabouts and one teacher, had spent the last ten days or more holed up in a rock shelter, reached by a long wooden ladder stamped with Pattersons of Kendal on one side.

The way things were panning out, if a small girl had run through the clearing below them chasing a white rabbit, Stephen would have found it hard to muster much in the way of surprise.

The two men had been offered an energy bar each on arrival, from a store of hard rations in one of the large plastic containers stacked at the back of the shelter. One of the children was now preparing an evening meal of something that looked suspiciously like dinosaur in sauce, accompanied by rice and in spite of everything, Stephen felt his stomach grumble in anticipation of a hot meal.

According to Annie Lowe, there were enough basic food supplies in the camp to last at least another month, and, with the help of a semi-automatic shotgun and the large batch of cartridges that had been stowed in one of the boxed, they’d supplemented their supplies pretty well. Ten year old Jamie’s dad ran the local clay-pigeon shoot, and he’d won the Northern Counties Junior Championship only a month ago.

Stephen had a nasty suspicion that if they ever did get back to their own time, then this lot could probably make a pretty successful bid for world domination if they put their minds to it.

“So why go back to where you found us?” he asked, sipping the coffee and wondering at what point he was going to start discovering what the hell was going on.

“The Star Gates don’t always seem to lead to the same place every time,” said Annie Lowe. Seeing the look on Stephen’s face, she added. “It’s as good a name as any. Why, what do you call them?”

“Anomalies,” Stephen offered, with a hint of embarrassment.

“The local people call them Gateways,” the teacher said. “But I guess it all amounts to the same thing. The children christened them Star Gates and it stuck. We’ve been trying to check as many as we can, but they change. Or at least we think they do, but if it’s night on the other side then it’s difficult to tell where you’ve ended up. This is the only place where we’ve found any evidence of other human beings so we stayed here in case the person who left this lot shows up. We’ve also been hoping that the one we came through will re-open. But as far, it hasn’t. Not yet, at least.” She waved her good hand to catch Declan’s attention, then said, “Show Stephen your notes, Declan.”

The boy handed over a notebook, opened at a page with a sketch of the area he thought of as Spaghetti Junction. Each one was marked with a cross and an annotation. SG1, 2, 3 etc. A separate page had brief notes on each. Dark. Forest. Raining. Heard something big. Another said, Looked like an allosaur pack. Didn’t hang around. SG5 read : Day 3. Pitch black. Rock walls on two sides. Knee deep water. Smelt funny. Day 5. Still dark, but maybe light some way off. Still smelt weird. Rotting wood?

“The gate that we came through was about a quarter of a mile away,” Annie Lowe waved her hand to one side. “Over there,” she gestured out over the clearing, “you’ll find the one that leads to the field with all the Gates. When we tried that, we found something like a dozen of them, but the one that led here was marked with a rock. That’s how we’ve kept track of it. A lot of them seem to come and go.” She looked at the two men and smiled. “The pair of you look knackered. Try and get some rest, and don’t worry, we won’t let you miss tea.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Blade, settling back against the rock wall and trying to ignore the pain from his mangled leg, “whatever it is it tastes like chicken.”

Vicky Thornton shot him a quick grin and shook her head. “Jamie says it tastes like cotton wool stewed in verruca cream.”

The soldier’s eyes opened sharply. “What do you think it tastes like?”

“I don’t know, but it smells like the stuff I put on my pony’s legs.”

“Haven’t you got anyone who’s parents are into cooking?” asked Stephen, hopefully.

The girl giggled and shimmied down the ladder, yelling something to her friends about the look-out rota.

“Sounds like that’s a no, sir,” muttered the soldier, with a sigh.

* * * * *

Much to Stephen’s surprise, the pair of them had to be woken up for the promised meal. He was even more surprised when the food turned out to be surprisingly palatable, but he suspected that had more to do with the fact that he’d eaten what amounted to practically bugger all in the last twelve hours. Energy bars might stave off the worst of the hunger pangs, but they were still no substitute for a hot meal.

They finished eating, and the camp started to settle down for the night, with the majority of the children retreating up into the rock shelter and pulling the ladder up behind them.

“There are more predators around at dusk,” explained twelve year old Josh. “We keep a twenty four hour watch for the Star Gate we came in through, but we do that from the platform in the big tree. We take it in turns. Vicky’s in charge of the rota.”

“Did you build the platform?” asked Stephen.

The boy shook his head. “Found it, same as we found the rest of the stuff. There’s a knotted rope leads up to it. Do you know who left this lot here?”

Stephen met the boys sharp brown eyes and nodded. “A woman called Helen, I think.”

“Will she help us?”

“I wish I knew,” Stephen Hart said, quietly. “I’d like to think she would, but I really don’t know any more.”

And before Josh could ask any more questions, Stephen closed his eyes, but this time, he couldn’t sleep.

Less than an hour later, a piercing whistle split the silence of the Cretaceous twilight.

Annie Lowe jumped to her feet, along with the rest of the children. The atmosphere was suddenly electric with activity.

“Grab your guns, you two, we’re leaving!” said the teacher.


	11. Chapter 11

Lyle jogged rapidly up the track. His thumbs were pricking as badly as they’d done on the night of the T. rex attack in the Forest of Dean. One itching hand stayed firmly attached to his assault rifle.

Low cloud was settling on the Kentmere fells, bringing down the visibility yet again. The three men he was following had already been swallowed up by the mist.

The soldier’s thoughts drifted as he ran. Part of him wished Ryan had just given the order to beat the truth out of Cutter’s stubborn bitch of a wife. Helen Cutter didn’t lack physical courage, Lyle had seen enough of the woman to know that, but she wasn’t trained to stand up to pain, and her reaction when he’d dislocated her finger down the Devil’s Crowll told him that it probably wouldn’t have taken too much effort to make her cooperate. But information gained by those methods came with no guarantees of reliability, and time wasn’t on their side. Plus the inconvenient fact that beating the crap out of women wasn’t Ryan’s style. Or his own, for that matter, no matter how tempting Helen Cutter made it seem.

Lester had told him that the anomalies were thought to be weakening, which didn’t bode well for their chances of recovering either the kids or Stephen Hart. But they’d just have to make the best of what was turning out to be a bloody bad job and keep looking, even though their intel was worse than fucking useless.

Lyle thumbed the safety catch off his rifle in response to a rustle in the undergrowth off to his left. Bracken waved in the breeze. The soldier hesitated, then kept on moving up the track.

More in hope than expectation, he flicked the switch on his radio headset. A vicious burst of static crackle was all he got in return.

A burst of gun fire ahead of him sounded without any warning. Lyle broke into a run.

The mist swirled, parting for a second to reveal the fractured light of an anomaly, hanging in the air no more than three metres off the path up in an area of the fells where he swore he’d spent almost two hours sitting on his arse on a damp rock the previous night.

Ryan was down on one knee next to the boulder, rifle aimed at something that had risen up out of the bracken. A second burst of automatic fire failed to take the creature down. It lunged forward, displaying something that looked improbably like horns sticking out sideways above its eyes.

The Special Forces captain flung himself sideways and rolled.

Lyle watched as the hillside suddenly came to life with what seemed to be a swarm of ugly looking sods rising up out of the mist, making a bee line for Ryan, Greg Thornton and Calum Richards. The Detective Inspector held his ground and, from what Lyle could see even managed to take one of the bastards down, but the rest kept moving, straight towards the three men, closing in from all sides.

Ryan didn’t hang about to debate what to do next. He snapped off a quick hail of bullets, then took the anomaly at a run. The other two followed.

“Thanks, mate,” muttered Lyle, still some distant away, “leave me to mop ‘em up, why don’t you?”

Four of the creatures broke away from the main pack and went straight after their original quarry, back through the anomaly. The rest stood their ground, heads swivelling to face Lyle, as he approached them at a run. The lieutenant came to a halt about twenty metres away from the dinosaurs and swung his pack off his shoulder, grabbing for something that might give him a chance of turning this into a more even contest.

Him against six of the most monumentally ugly bastards he’d ever had the misfortune to clap eyes on. Not necessarily the best odds he’d faced, but not the worst, either.

The beasts were big, standing at least 5 metres tall. They blended all too well into the dark greeney brown of the bracken, their skin appearing to be composed of a mass of pebbly scales, with bony ridges running along their sides and also down the back of their necks and bodies. Their heads were short, and made them look like they’d run into a brick wall at speed. At first Lyle thought they had enormous eyes on the sides of their heads, then he realised that no, they actually had a bloody great big hole in front of their eye sockets.

An antorbital opening. Christ knows what they were for, but he remembered the name.

The soldier grinned. Something had clearly stuck in his brain from Cutter’s Friday afternoon lectures. Now if he could only get something lodged in their heads, he’d be even happier. Preferably something wearing a steel jacket, delivered at high velocity.

Lyle let out the sort of whistle that used to get him into all kinds of trouble at school.

Six heads turned as one.

The soldier went down on one knee and took careful aim.

* * * * *

Ryan flung himself to one side as he burst out of the anomaly then turned back to, hoping to take advantage of confusion as their pursuers came hurtling after them through the broken light.

His first shots cut a red swathe along a creature’s side, but it kept moving. He fired again, trying for a head shot.

“What the hell are they?” breathed Greg Thornton, scrabbling round for something to use as a weapon as another creature barrelled past him, fortunately without inflicting any damage.

“Angry,” commented D.I. Richards, snapping off a burst of bullets at the fourth of the creatures to come through after them.

“Carnivorous,” said Ryan calmly, emptying an entire clip of bullets into the largest of the dinosaurs. “Cover me!” he ordered, as he changed the magazine, watching in satisfaction as one of the huge animals crumbled to the ground. “One down, three to go. And they don’t half take a lot of lead to stop. Go for head shots. They can take a fuck of a lot of damage to the body, by the look of it.”

One of the dinosaurs turned and started to run, but this time away from them.

“Nice sight,” breathed Greg Thornton.

Calum Richards sucked his breath in sharply, “No, it fucking isn’t…look!”

Coming towards them at a run were a ragged group of school children, trying hard to stay together, with one adult, a woman with her arm in a sling, bringing up the rear. Something looking like a smaller version of one of the things that had ambushed them on the moor darted forward out of some low growing ferns and made a grab for a child’s arm. One of the group stopped and the blast from both barrels of a shotgun took the creature in the chest and hurled it off its feet.

“Keep running!” yelled the child who’d done the shooting, as he stopped and started to reload the shotgun. He dropped one cartridge in his haste. His companion shoved long blonde hair from around her face with one hand, while grabbing at the fallen cartridge with the other.

Ryan’s heart climbed rapidly up his throat and into his mouth as he watched with a mixture of pride and terror as his daughter calmly handed the cartridge to her companion. Next to them, another kid, a boy, stood his ground with them, fiddling with something in his hands. 

Two of the smaller dinosaurs appeared from the long fern fronds, emitting a high pitched hiss, darting their long heads forwards like snakes snapping at a mongoose.

An loud whine came from whatever the boy was holding in his hands and the two creatures veered off to one side, keeping their distance, clearly disliking the ear-splitting noise.

Rifle fire sounded from some distance away, from the cover of what looked like a stand of huge pine trees.

A figure broke from the trees at a fast run, a child held tightly in his arms.

For a second, Ryan was frozen into immobility as he recognised his lover, the lover he’d believed was still somewhere on a hillside millions of years in the future, then training and instinct took over. A carefully aimed burst of semi-automatic fire sent two of the smaller creatures flying backwards. Stephen kept on running and Ryan realised the child in his arms was covered in blood.

Oh fuck!

The first of the kids was now only twenty metres away. A girl. No older than his daughter, with red hair and a pair of glasses balanced precariously on a small, snub nose. The fern fronds in the undergrowth moved and long thin head snaked out. The kid skidded to a halt, swinging… a hammer.

Ryan dropped her attacker with three single shots and the girl turned round, grabbed the hand of the boy behind her, took a swipe at the undergrowth with the hammer just for good measure and started running again, throwing the soldier a large smile.

At Ryan’s side, Calum Richards had dropped to his knees, less practiced than the Special Forces captain at shooting an assault rifle from a standing position. The M4 might not be standard issue at Police Training College, but the inspector was still doing a fair job of laying down covering fire without endangering any of the children or their teacher.

The soldier dragged the Glock pistol out of his thigh holster and thrust it at Greg Thornton. “Get the kids back through the anomaly. Lyle will have taken care of the other fuckers by now.”

“That’s Vicky,” breathed her step-father, staring at the rapidly approaching group of children.

Ryan nodded, grey eyes scouring the landscape for threats. His daughter was alive. His lover was alive, although fuck knows what Stephen was doing on the wrong side of an anomaly. But the main thing was that the two most important people in his world were both alive. And he was going to fucking well make sure they stayed that way.

* * * * *

The anomaly flickered.

Greg Thornton arrived at a run onto a mist-covered Cumbrian hillside, his step-daughter no more than two paces behind him.

Four other children followed in quick succession.

Calum Richards came backwards through the dancing light, his rifle dangling from his shoulder and a small, limp figure cradled in his arms, dripping blood. At his side, his nephew was still fiddling with his hearing aid amplifier for maximum effect.

The police inspector threw Lyle a wild eyed look. “Clear?”

The lieutenant nodded, but didn’t stay to make conversation.

Lyle was dimly conscious of being passed by at least one figure, maybe more, as he ran through the shimmering light into the past.

He was greeted by a chaotic scene, straight out of one of his worst nightmares. A child was on the ground, one of the ugly horned buggers was bending over her, jaws agape in classic movie fashion. Another figure – Stephen? – was rolling over and over in an attempt to evade snapping jaws, as a woman passed by him at a run, a child scooped up under one arm, neatly side-stepping both Stephen and the thing that was trying to pin him down.

“Hart! Stay down!” yelled Lyle, taking aim and squeezing the trigger in one fluid movement.

The grenade hit the creature in the stomach, blowing it into messy fragments.

The woman ran on without stopping, diving through the flickering anomaly, the child still clinging to her.

Lyle watched Stephen Hart get to his feet and stare wildly round, his blue eyes seeking out Ryan like a drowning man looking for water. The lieutenant watched the younger man’s mouth moving, forming words that Lyle couldn’t make out, then Hart turned, and ran back the way he’d come. Away from the anomaly.

A predator rose up out of the foliage. Christ, Lyle was really taking a dislike to the bloody things. He jammed another grenade into the launcher attached to his assault rifle and fired. Fuck it, missed the bastard! Getting the trajectory right was a sod, especially when the targets wouldn’t do the decent thing and stay still. A second grenade followed the first, this time to better effect.

“Ryan, grab the last two kids and get the fuck out of here!”

“Blade’s holed up in the trees. His leg’s fucked.” Ryan’s voice sounded preternaturally calm as he watched his lover heading back into danger. “That’s why Hart’s going back.”

Lyle let fly with a quiet, but inventive stream of obscenity, finishing with, “Then get the hell out of here and leave them to me. I think I got the bastards on the other side, but I can’t be sure. Fuck off out of here, Ryan, I’m loaded for bear, trust me! Go on, you’re cramping my style.” The hazel eyed lieutenant shot one last look at his friend as the other man backed towards the flickering anomaly. “And tell Lester I meant what I said on the phone.”

“Jon…”

“Go!”

Ryan reached out, grabbing the arm of the last two children, and dived back through the anomaly, pulling them both after him.

Seconds later, it winked out of existence.

Lieutenant Jon Lyle took a deep, and slightly shaky breath as he rammed another rifle grenade onto the launcher and called out, “Hart? Blade? I’m coming, ready or not! Last one home writes the report!”

* * * * *

Ryan stared at the hillside in disbelief. It had been there only seconds ago, but now ………now it was gone, taking with it his lover, his best friend and one of his men.

The soldier tore his eyes from the swirling white nothingness of the mist, scanning the fell for threats.

Around them the grass was strewn with blood and dinosaur guts. Lyle hadn’t been in a mood to take prisoners, that was for sure. The small grenades designed to be fired from an attachment on the barrel of the M4 had done a good job of taking their attackers down.

He glanced round him, trying to force his thoughts into some sort of order.

The unconscious kid that Stephen had thrust into Calum Richards’ arms appeared to have the worst injuries. Blood was dripping from light brown hair and running down one pale limp hand. “How bad?” he asked, forcing the words out of a throat that seemed to have grown an extra Adam’s apple.

“Not as bad as it looks, I don’t think,” said the policeman, after a rapid examination of the child’s still form. “The rips on her arm are fairly superficial, but there’s a lump the size of an egg coming up on her forehead.”

“She tripped and hit her head on a tree,” said a quiet voice at his side. His daughter’s hand found his and clung to him. “Three of the bird things grabbed her. Stephen bashed two of them with his rifle and Blade shot the other.”

Ryan squeezed the small hand gently, then pulled his daughter up into his arms for a fierce hug, enjoying the luxury, for an all too brief moment, of burying his face in his daughter’s hair and inhaling deeply, smelling sweat, blood and small girl. She kissed his cheek, snaking both arms around his neck and hugging tightly.

“You came, Daddy, I knew you would.” The breathless voice held an unwavering certainty.

“So did your step-dad,” said Ryan, lowering his daughter to the ground.

Victoria Thornton grinned, and grabbed Greg with her free hand. The tears shining in his eyes said it all, and in a second the blonde haired child was in his arms. The two men faced each other over their daughter’s head and exchanged shaky smiles, then the reality of the situation hit Ryan again with the force of a 10 ton truck.

The anomaly had closed, trapping three men in the past.

Would they be lucky a second time?

Somehow, Ryan doubted it.

Greg Thornton gripped the soldier’s shoulder hard with one hand. “Don’t give up on him, Ryan. We haven’t reached the end of the road yet, I promise you.”

And in the professionally detached part of his mind that hadn’t yet succumbed to the urge to fold in on itself, looking for a safe place to give in to fear, Ryan noticed that the other man had said him, rather than them.

“They’ve got Declan’s notebook, Daddy,” said Vicky, squeezing her father’s hand in an attempt at comfort. “That’s got stuff on all the Gates. We gave it to Blade when he said he’d stay behind and cover us. His leg’s bad, he knew he wouldn’t make it through.” Tears pricked at her eyes and she scrubbed at them with one grimy fist. “There are other Star Gates, loads of them. They’ll get back, I know they will.” Her voice trailed off, and tears started to run down her cheeks. “Stephen saved me from one of the carnotauruses. He shoved his dart gun down its throat.” She squeezed her father’s hand again. “He’ll be all right, I know he will. They’ll all come back, just like we did.”

It had been three years since Ryan had seen his daughter. Three long, lonely, crappy, fucking awful years. And after less than five minutes in each other’s company, Vicky was now doing her best to tell him that his boyfriend would make it back in one piece. And she spoke with such a fierce intensity behind her words that he actually found himself believing her. Even in the soldier’s current state of emotional turmoil, the irony of that wasn’t lost on him.

Two blue eyes stared solemnly up at him out of a face that suddenly seemed far older than its years. Eyes that had faced things out a nightmare. Eyes that had seen the past. And maybe, just maybe, she was right. Maybe Stephen would make it back.

Ryan looked down at his daughter and brushed her filthy hair back from the forehead. “Do a count for me, Vicky. We need to know everyone’s here. Then we need to get you lot back to civilization.”

They were almost back at the vehicles before any of the three men succeeded in getting a mobile signal, then suddenly, all of their phones came to life at once.

Calum Richards rang 999 and demanded ambulances.

Greg Thornton tried calling his wife.

Ryan dialled Lester. “We’ve got the kids and the teacher back, sir…yes, all of them… some injuries… no, we don’t know yet…” the soldier hesitated. “Sir, I think you ought to get up here…Yes, as quickly as you can. I think Miss Brown might need some help containing this one. And we don’t know how active the anomalies still are, so we’ll need Stringer and his lads. Yes, sir, I know that, but we need them here, as well. We’ve taken… casualties.”

To his relief, the signal cut out again almost immediately. There was one piece of news he had no intention of breaking over the phone. Even if Lester commandeered a helicopter or a plane, it would still be three hours or so before he could get here, and a lot could happen in that time. If it didn’t, there’d be plenty of time for bad news later.

If Ryan had to punch a big hole in the guy’s cold, composed mask, he’d prefer to be somewhere more private when he did it. Somehow he doubted that they’d end up crying on each other’s shoulders, but he’d still prefer not to have an audience when he broke the news.


	12. Chapter 12

Nick Cutter stared at his phone in frustration, more than half tempted to throw the damn thing down and stamp on it. At least grinding it into bits would stop that arrogant sod in London giving any more orders.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you, Professor,” said Connor, a placatory tone. “I lost mine back at the last anomaly. They might not be much use around here, but they’re better than nothing.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” snapped Cutter, rolling his r’s in a way that he only did when he was in a really bad mood. “He wants us back at the house. According to Lyle, we’re too strung out.”

Finn nodded approvingly. In his opinion, it was the first sensible thing anyone had said for hours. In the absence of effective communications, physically re-grouping was the best thing they could do. It was bad enough tearing around the countryside in a flat spin in daylight, but with the mist coming down again, and dusk fast approaching, they needed more kit, and more importantly, they needed a plan. In fact, in the soldier’s view, they needed a decent plan even more than they needed the latest in night goggles and thermal imaging, although Connor would probably prefer having high tech toys to play with.

Cutter turned on his heel and made his way back to the car, grunting to their police escort that they were heading back to the Thornton’s house.

Connor gave a small nod of approval, catching Ditzy’s eye and grinning, “I thought he really was going to stamp on it. It might only be a crappy five year old Nokia, but at the rate the rest of us seem to get through the things, it might be all we end up with.” He sighed heavily, “And Lester’s right, we need to get a grip rather than diving off here there and everywhere. We’ll be better off in a reach of a landline right now.”

The two soldiers shot approving glances at the student.

Ditzy grinned. “We’ll make a soldier of you yet, kid.”

A slight blush coloured Connor’s cheeks and he mumbled, “And the batteries in my laptop are running low.”

Finn laughed.

Connor made puppy dog eyes at the soldier, “If we have to go out again later, any chance I’ll get a gun?”

“Only if you promise not to lose it through an anomaly, or shoot someone, or leave it lying around where anyone can pick it up ……….”

It made a change not to be met with a flat no. Connor’s hopeful look slid into a grin, which faded to a look of mild concern as the policeman and Cutter set off at a speed somewhat great than the legal limit for narrow country lanes, and Ditzy accelerated in an attempt to keep up. Cutter might not have approved of the instruction to return to base, but the policeman clearly did if his enthusiastic driving was anything to go by.

* * * * *

The first thing that Connor noticed as they swung round the front of the house into the courtyard in the gathering gloom, was that there seemed to be way too many lights on everywhere. All the outside lights were blazing, so were the lights along the driveway.

“Looks like Blackpool fucking Illuminations,” muttered Finn. “More money than sense, by the look of it.”

The car in front, containing Cutter and the policeman, pulled round the back into the yard. Ditzy followed.

Connor got out of the vehicle, clutching his laptop case, and promptly stepped on a large stainless steel sauce pan. His foot skidded and he landed in a heap on his arse. On another bloody pan.

“Ouch!”

Ditzy looked round, saw Connor with one foot wearing a pan, sprawled out on the grey flags of the yard. The student tried to struggle to his feet and slipped again, this time on a patch of something red and sticky.

Something that looked suspiciously like blood.

“Trouble! Watch yourselves!” yelled the medic, reaching down and hauling Connor to his feet, while simultaneous ridding him of his somewhat incongruous and unhelpful new footwear.

Cutter stared round him, eyes adjusting to the glare of the lights in the gathering gloom. A chair lay on its side, broken, near the back door of the Thornton’s kitchen. A door which swung ominously open in a stiff breeze which suddenly whipped across the yard.

And around them in the mist lay several large lumps on the flagstones. Which, on closer imagination turned out to be dead flesh oozing blood and entrails.

Nick Cutter cast a quick eye over the remains. “Connor! Opinion, now!”

Ditzy, Finn and the policeman fanned out across the yard.

Connor stared down at the remains of what looked like some sort of medium sized therapod. A long head, partly obliterated by bullets, was joined to a plump but streamlined body by a strong neck. The jaws lolled open in death, displaying rows of sharp, serrated teeth, stained with blood that probably wasn’t its own. Long slim fore-limbs ended in three-clawed fingers, one of which gripped a torn strip of fawn coloured material.

The student dropped to his knees, muttering as he absently pulled the scrap out of the creature’s claw and handed it up to Cutter. “Big eyes… it’s a night hunter, look at the size of ‘em… these guy’s’ll be in their element right now…oh shit, look at the hind claw…” The eyes that looked up at Cutter were dark with emotion. “Troodons, Cutter, like the deinonychus only smaller and with better night vision. Late Cretaceous. If we’d met these sods down the Crowll, we wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“Trev’s colleague didn’t,” said Ditzy, crouching down at Connor’s side, and wiping blood-stained fingers down his combat trousers. “They ripped her face off, then tore her throat out. He’s throwing up and I don’t blame him. What are we up against, Conn?”

Connor paled, but delivered an admirably succinct appraisal of their opponents in a voice than he somehow managed to keep steady.

Ditzy nodded, and without speaking, handed Connor a pistol. “Careful with it, there’s no safety catch. Clip’s got 15 rounds. Try not to use all of ‘em.” He glanced up at Cutter. “Personally, I wouldn’t say this is a good time for any of your scruples about guns, Professor. These sods clearly haven’t escaped from a petting zoo.” The medic jerked his head at Finn, who held his Glock out, butt first.

Nick Cutter dropped the scrap of material which he knew, without needing to be told, came from Claudia Brown’s trousers. He took the gun without a word, his blue eyes as cold as the mist that swirled around the ominously silent yard.

He opened his mouth to ask the medic what his plan was, when a shot sounded – from inside the house. The words died on his lips and he started moving.

Ditzy’s hand shot out and grabbed his arm. “Not so fast, sir.” He raised his voice, “Trev, there’s nothing you can do for her, mate, get over here now.”

The young policeman came over, picking his way round the sprawl of bodies, still oozing blood and guts. His face was even paler than Connor’s and the hand which held his extendable metal baton shook slightly. “She was getting married next month,” he said in a voice that sound very quiet and very far away.

Cutter reached out and gripped the young man’s arm hard. “Don’t think about it, man, not yet. We’ve got others to worry about now. Did either of you check the cottage?”

Finn nodded. “The door’s closed, and there’s no sign of entry. If they’re anywhere, they’re all in the main house, I reckon. That shot came from upstairs.”

“OK, so we go in,” Ditzy’s voice was calm and authoritative. The medic’s normal job mostly consisted of patching other people up, but in Lyle’s absence, he was also, at 2nd Lieutenant, the next highest ranking officer on the team. “Finn, you’re on point. I’ll cover you. Professor, you and Trev watch our backs. Conn, you stay in the middle. Don’t use the gun unless you have to, and if you do use it, make sure you’ve got a clear view of whatever you’re aiming at. Remember, there are people in there as well.”

Connor held the pistol out to the PC, who was barely a year or two older than him. “I’ll swop you for the truncheon. I reckon I’ll do less damage to the rest of us with that.”

Another shot sounded from inside the house as the two young men traded weapons.

“Shotgun,” muttered Finn. “Upstairs, towards the front.”

“So we take the main stairs,” said Ditzy. “Move it!” As they jogged towards the open back door, the soldier traded a quick grin with Connor, who was gripping the handle of the baton so hard his knuckles showed white. “I’ll take you on the range, first chance I get, and that’s a promise, mate.”

Connor nodded, snatching the chance to deposit his laptop next to the sink in the kitchen, before they headed out into the wide entrance hall.

A scutter of claws sounded on the polished parquet flooring.

Finn let fly with a short burst from his M4. One troodon was hurled backwards into a long cased clock, which gave a dismal boing. A second one dodged the bullets and careered straight into the middle of their group, catching the young policeman unawares, before he even had the chance to bring his pistol into play, and ripping a long slash down his leg.

“Fucking hell!”

A single shot from Ditzy’s rifle blew a large hole in the predator’s body, sending up a spray of what looked like feathers mixed in with the blood.

“Are they birds, or what?” he asked, as Finn started to dive up the stairs.

“Long debate,” panted Connor, grabbing Trevor’s hand and yanking the policeman back to his feet. “Ask me again in a pub sometime.” He unwound the scarf from his neck. “Tie this round it, or you’ll be slipping in the blood, but be quick about it. I think there’s more of the sods to come.”

A shotgun blast from somewhere at the other end of the house ripped the air apart.

“Hopefully that means one less,” muttered Cutter. “Claudia! Claudia Brown? Can you hear me?” His words were almost drowned out by another shotgun blast.

Finn glanced at Ditzy, got a nod in return then moved off again up the stairs.

As he did so, they heard a voice yell out in annoyance, “Open the bloody door!”

“Not until you tell me how to find my daughter, Mrs Cutter,” replied the calm, controlled voice of Ryan’s ex-wife.

“Claudia, let me in before I get ripped to pieces!”

“Then tell us what we need to know, Helen.” Claudia’s tone were equally implacable. “If you do, we might even undo the handcuffs.”

“Psychotic bitches!”

“Well, I could say takes one to know one,” said Amanda Thornton, her voice muffled by a thick door, “but let’s not get childish.”

Cutter’s eyebrows shot up far enough to meet his fringe. They rounded the top of the stairs at a run. Finn dropped to one knee, giving Ditzy clear line of sight over his head. Four troodons were massing in the corridor, stalking a frantic Helen Cutter. The woman was kicking hard at a sturdy wooden door, which showed no inclination to yield even to her methods of persuasion.

“Let her in and close the door, Miss Brown!” yelled Ditzy. “We need a clear line of fire and we need it now!”

The medic threw his arm out, stopping Cutter from making a dash to his wife’s aid. For good measure, Connor grabbed hold of the Professor’s jacket. Ditzy gave Cutter a sharp look. “I can cut them down before they get to her, but she’s in danger of getting hit. I don’t want you in the way as well, sir. Finn, take out the stray one on the left if you can.”

Over the scrabbling of claws and the demented hissing noise the creatures were making, they barely heard the sound of a key turning in the lock, followed by the rasp of a bolt being shot back. Finn squeezed off one shot, and the troodon that Ditzy had singled out died without even knowing it had been under threat.

Kermit’s voice carried clearly down the corridor, “Back up, sir, Amanda’s giving them both barrels as soon as Mrs Cutter’s inside!”

A sudden yell from Connor added to the confusion, “Behind us, more of them!”

Ditzy turned at the warning, shoving Cutter to one side, and firing between Connor and the policeman. Trevor Hunt took aim with the Glock, holding the heavy pistol steady in both hands and snapping off a succession of impressively accurate shots. Then they were retreating back to the top of the stairs to avoid getting caught in any gun fire from the bedroom at the end where the others were holed up.

“On the count of three… ONE…TWO…” Ditzy’s final word was drowned out by both a roar from the shotgun and the sharper, more metallic rattle of an assault rifle.

Kermit’s cry of “We’re clear of the door!” echoed off the walls as the bedroom door banged shut again.

Ditzy and Finn both flicked their guns to fully automatic and raked the corridor from side to side, wrecking the decoration in a manner that was going to be difficult to explain to any insurance company, and catching the pack of predators in a hail of bullets. Blood and feathers sprayed up the walls.

“Finish ‘em off, then we clear the rest of the house,” Ditzy instructed, as the sound of two pistols firing at once on the stairwell dragged his attention away from the carnage.

It took fifteen minutes and another full clip of ammunition before the medic was satisfied that there wasn’t a live troodon left in the house. And it wasn’t a wholly one sided battle, either. A moment’s inattention led to a pair of nastily serrated teeth fastening themselves onto Ditzy’s arm.

Connor’s aim with the extendable baton had succeeded in breaking the animal’s neck before it could bring the formidable hind-claws into play. The soldier had smiled his thanks, while he’d calmly fired three rounds into the still twitching corpse.

Eventually, Finn called out, “Clear!”

Connor allowed himself to slump against the wall and rub the sweat off his face. His hand came away streaked with blood. He glanced at Cutter questioningly.

“Not yours,” said the other man, as he picked his way down the corridor towards the closed room at the end.

Claudia opened the door, leaning heavily on the frame, a blood soaked towel knotted round her thigh.

Amanda Thornton stood next to her, a shotgun cradled in her arms like a cherished baby.

Kermit was sitting on the end of the bed, glaring at Helen Cutter, who was rubbing her wrists and returning the look with interest.

“Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?” Nick asked, leaning forward and brushing Claudia’s lips with his, in a gesture that his wife clearly didn’t appreciate.

Amanda Thornton looked amused.

The silence was broken by the loud ringing of the telephone on a table next to the bed.

Kermit leaned over and answered it. “Thornton residence. Mrs Thornton’s butler speaking. Yeah, she’s here.” He listened for a moment then held the phone out to Amanda, eyes dancing with relief. “It’s your husband. They’ve got your daughter. She’s OK.”

In the clamour that followed his words, none of them could be sure afterwards at exactly what point Helen Cutter had succeeded in slipping away. It was also fair to say that no-one was too bothered at that stage, either.

When Ryan arrived back with his news, it became a different matter. But by then it was too late.

Cutter’s wife had vanished into the mist, taking any information they might have got from her away into the mist and the darkness and the teeming rain.


	13. Chapter 13

The house and yard no longer resembled an abattoir. The policewoman’s body had been taken away in an ambulance and Finn had found the energy from somewhere to hose the worst of the blood and guts off the grey flags of the yard after they’d piled up the bodies of the troodons into a horse box, awaiting disposal.

Fifteen adults had been involved in the attack on the house. Yet more evidence for Connor’s theory that therapods hunted in packs.

The student lay in a loose-limbed sprawl across a settee in the Thornton’s lounge, wondering exactly when it was that he’d started to enjoy quite this much sugar in his coffee. He felt a fraud, lying there without any injuries, but the slow creep of adrenaline fatigue couldn’t be denied, and he doubted that he’d manage to walk in a straight line across the room even with the aid of a stick.

Kermit had taken the worst damage of all of them, but he’d refused to stay in hospital over night. The injured soldier was keeping himself occupied by limping around in the kitchen, proving surprisingly adept at using his one good arm to help Claudia make yet more hot drinks. She limped as well, but at least still had the use of both arms.

Amanda Thornton appeared in the doorway, hair damp from the shower. “Get some rest, Claudia. I’ll take over here.”

The dark haired woman shook her head, stubbornly. “You sound like Nick. I’m fine, really. If I sit down, this bloody leg will just stiffen up.”

“Didn’t Ditzy tell you to rest?”

Claudia’s dismissive sniff adequately conveyed her views on the subject of rest. “Where’s Ryan?”

“With Greg, in Vicky’s room. Tom looks like grim death and it’s not just about Jon, is it?”

Claudia looked down at the teapot as though it had just grown an extra spout. “He’s worried sick about all of them. From what that farmer told Nick, all the anomalies round here are losing their grip. God only knows if that one will open again, and if it doesn’t, there’s no predicting what chance they have of getting back.”

“I’m not bloody stupid, you know. Stephen’s his boyfriend, isn’t he?”

Claudia mashed the teabag hard with a spoon, wondering desperately how to change the subject.

The arrival of Kermit, carrying three empty mugs one-handed provided a momentary distraction, but it was clear from the wary look on the soldier’s face that he’d overheard the question.

His captain’s ex-wife fixed him with a stare that could easily have given a troodon pause for thought and demanded. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

The young soldier shuffled uncomfortably. “Not for me to say, ma’am.”

Amanda Thornton sighed. “You make a lousy liar, Kermit,” but the look in her blue eyes was softer than the words. “Tom’s going to need something stronger than coffee to get him through tonight. There’s a bottle of brandy in the drinks cupboard next to you, Claudia. Stick a hefty slug in both of those two teas and I’ll take them upstairs. Then the next trick’s going to be getting some food down him. That might be harder, so I’m open to constructive suggestions.”

With that, she picked up the drinks with one hand, grabbed the brandy bottle with the other and went back upstairs.

Claudia looked at Kermit and gave something that closely resembled a helpless shrug.

The young soldier grinned. “The same goes for Lester, miss. Do you think Mrs. Thornton’d be willing to tackle him as well?”

It was Claudia’s turn to sigh. “See if you can find something resembling a deep fat fryer. I’ve never met a man yet who’d turn down a chip butty at midnight, not even Sir James Lester.”

Kermit glanced at the kitchen clock. “It’s 3.30am, ma’am.”

“Still sounds like a good idea to me,” commented Lester, from behind him. “Did I hear a mention of brandy as well?”

“It’s a well-stocked drinks cupboard, I imagine there’ll be a second bottle. Then after that you need food and sleep, James, and no argument, or I’ll get Ditzy to do something about the lot of you.”

“He’s already tried,” said Lester, absently. “That’s why I came to watch the tea being made, in case the sod decided to try and slip me some of his knock-out drops. Do I take it that the estimable Mrs. Thornton has taken the news of her ex-husband’s relationship somewhat more calmly than one might have expected?”

“Looks like it,” said Kermit, cheerfully. “Unless she was intending to bash him with that bottle.”

* * * * *

Maneuvering the door handle down with her elbow, Amanda entered her daughter’s bedroom as quietly as possible.

Vicky lay curled on her side, a blue fleece blanket decorated with horse’s heads tucked round her shoulders, one small hand holding it tightly up to her face. Her blonde hair, clean now and free from tangles for the first time in what, for her, had been ten days, fanned out on the pillow.

Ryan lay next to her on the bed, one arm carefully cradling his daughter’s body as she pressed back against him through the duvet.

Greg Thornton sat on the floor next to the bed, head pillowed on one arm, asleep, but still holding his step-daughter’s hand.

Amanda pushed the door closed. From the look of naked exhaustion on her ex-husband’s face, it seemed likely that at the moment he needed sleep more than he needed food.

Ryan opened his eyes. Grey eyes, wary and pain filled, met blue. And found sympathy, not hostility.

“Can you move without waking her up?”

Ryan carefully shifted up into a sitting position and accepted the mug she held out to him. “They’re both out for the count. Ditzy wasn’t taking any chances with nightmares tonight. Not after what she’s been through. I tried to get Greg to lie down properly, but there wasn’t room for all of us.”

“He’s a good man, Tom. I’m happy with him.”

Ryan held her gaze, but said nothing, unsure of how fragile the apparent truce might turn out to be.

“We married too soon, Tom, didn’t we? And it was a mistake to think that having a baby was going to solve our problems. You were still married to the bloody job and I still hated you because of it. Greg puts me first, he always has. That’s not something you could ever do, was it?”

“No,” said Ryan, quietly. “It wasn’t. And I hated myself for it, as well. Then by the time I realised I was ready to put Vicky first, it was too late.”

“But you kept writing, and sending presents, and she kept wanting to know when she’d see her Daddy again, and that just made me hate you even more. She makes up stories about you, Tom, about her Daddy who’s away all the time on secret missions. And Greg tells her bed-time stories about you as well, and he thinks I don’t know about it. He loves her like she’s his own, but he still manages to make up stories to tell her about her other Daddy.”

Ryan took a mouthful of the brandy-laced tea, not trusting himself to speak. When he finally met his ex-wife’s eyes, there were tears in his own.

“You’re right, Mandy, he’s a good man. And he’s a bloody brave one. It didn’t matter a damn to him how many of those sods we faced on that fell. They were between him and his daughter, and that was all that mattered. I’m not going to come between them either. I promise you that. I’ll carry on sending the cards, and Greg can still make stuff up for her and…”

“And you’re still a bloody fool, Tom Ryan!” The words were quietly spoken, but delivered with the force of a high powered round. “If you try and drop out of Vicky’s life now, you’ll have me to answer to, and that’s a promise, not a threat. Look at her, you idiot. If she’s got room in her heart for two daddies then we can sodding well find a way of making this work and if you do anything to break her heart, I’ll bloody well kill you myself. Your lad told you what I did to those damned things with Greg’s shotgun, so if you don’t want the same treatment, you’ll do as you’re bloody well told for once in your monumentally stubborn life.”

“When did you start swearing so much?” asked her ex-husband, dragging a sleeve across wet, and somewhat surprised eyes.

“When I realised that only a few pots and pans were standing between me and a flock of psychotic and distinctly over-grown chickens, if you must know.”

“Talking of psychotic, I also heard what you and Claudia were apparently doing to Helen Cutter…”

“We wouldn’t really have let her get eaten, even if she did deserve it, and don’t change the bloody subject, Tom.”

Ryan grinned, albeit somewhat half heartedly. It was a familiar refrain from the old days, but on this occasion at least it had been delivered without the usual accompanying venom.

“According to Ditzy, the look on Cutter’s face when he heard you talking to her through the door had to be seen to be believed.”

“So did the look on her face when the first thing he did was kiss the lovely Claudia Brown.”

“I’d like to have seen that,” mused Ryan, a introspective look in his tired grey eyes. “It’s a grudge match between me and the ex-Mrs Cutter right now and I reckon we’ve just reached the stage of a score draw.”

“So how long have you and Stephen Hart been together?”

The abrupt change of subject left Ryan hung out to dry, and he knew it. “Six months, give or take a couple of weeks. He’s a good man, Mandy.”

She laughed and there were tears in her own eyes now. “And he makes you happy. It’s time you found someone who can do that, Tom.”

“When did you guess?”

“When I saw the look you traded with James Lester after you’d told him about Jon. I was bringing the pair of you coffee, but you didn’t notice. You both looked like men who’d seen every hope they’d ever had ripped to shreds in front of their eyes. You looked like that the last time you saw Vicky and I don’t ever want to see that look again as long as I live.” She reached out and stroked his hand and he held onto her fingers like a climber clinging to one last safe hold. “And I don’t need telling that him and Jon are an item as well. Christ, what are they putting in the water in Hereford these days?” She ran her other hand gently down the stubble on his cheek. “We’ll get them back, Tom. Believe it. And if I have to personally pursue that bloody woman to the ends of the earth, through whatever bloody eras of the past she tries to take refuge in, then I will do. And when I find her, she’ll tell us the fucking truth, or I really will rip her up and feed her to the mad chickens. Now lie down and go to sleep and don’t move out of here until Vicky wakes up. She’s going to find both of her fathers here when she wakes up, and if another bunch of jumped up hens comes on a package tour from the past, then I’ll use the spare pans, and I won’t need any help from you.”

And after delivering the longest speech that Ryan had heard from her, outside of a courtroom, in the last four years, Amanda Thornton leant forward, kissed her ex-husband lightly on the lips and walked out of the bedroom, with tears running unheeded down her pale face.

Ryan scrubbed his own face dry with a corner of the horse’s head blanket, pressed a kiss into his sleeping daughter’s hair, and within five minutes the brandy had taken effect, and he’d slipped into a deep, but unfortunately not dreamless sleep.


	14. Chapter 14

“Jesus H. Christ!” The note of awe in Lyle’s voice more than made up for the lack of his customary eloquence. “What the hell is this place?”

Stephen grinned, in spite of their situation. “Some sort of no-man’s land, as far as we can tell. The kids said they hadn’t seen any creatures around here, nothing but the Star Gates, according to Declan’s notes.”

Lyle groaned. “Don’t call ‘em that in front of Connor, it’ll catch on, and then you’ll be sorry.” The Special Forces lieutenant stared around at the field full of flickering light clusters and muttered, “Grass, we’re standing on grass.”

“So that makes it late Cretaceous at the very earliest,” commented Stephen. “Any time from 65 million years ago to yesterday, give or take a million or so. Is that significant right now?”

“Haven’t a bloody clue, mate,” countered Lyle, cheerfully. “I’m only making polite conversation until that lazy sod prostrating himself decoratively at my feet gets his second wind.” He prodded Blade casually with the toe of his boot. “OK, you’ve been reading the notes, so which one do we pick?”

The soldier shrugged, his once vivid green eyes now dull with pain and exhaustion. “We may as well do Ip Dip Sky Blue for all the fucking good it’ll probably do us…”

“So stop lounging around and start reading,” snapped his lieutenant. “If you haven’t come up with the answer in five minutes you can phone a friend, if you’ve got one or ask the audience.”

“We might end up with nothing more than a fifty fifty at this rate,” said Stephen, quietly. “I don’t want to worry you, boys, but three of the things have just winked out while we’ve been talking.”

Lyle sighed. “Make that two minutes, Blade, but no pressure.”

Staring at one of the anomalies rather than at the battered notebook in his hand, Blade said quietly and calmly, “If you’ve got a tactical nuke stowed in a pocket, sir, I reckon now’d be a good time for a show and tell.”

“Oh shit,” said Lyle, as a fourth carnotaurus stalked warily after its friends and relations through the anomaly that had led the men here. “Sorry, but you know what it’s been like in the latest round of Defence cuts.”

Blade shoved the notebook into Stephen’s hands. “Take this. It might come in useful.”

Lyle shoved another grenade onto his rifle and remarked, “I’ve got four of these left, and there are four of them. Fair enough. I’d hate to disappoint one of the little darlings.”

“Five,” breathed Stephen, as another one appeared. “They’re breeding like fucking rabbits back there. Come on, Blade, upsy daisy…”

The soldier shook his head. “Not this time, sir, sorry, but this leg really is buggered now, and so am I. Drop as many as you can, then get the fuck out of here. Take my rifle. I’ve still got half a clip left in the pistol. I only need one for me, so chances are I’ll at least manage to slow the sods down if you miss any of ‘em.”

Lyle shook his head. “Oh no you don’t, laddie. I’m not explaining this to your old granny. She makes that lot look harmless.” He unzipped his tac vest and handed it over to Stephen. “There are five full clips in the pockets for when you need them. The grenades are in the bottom right. At this distance aim about six inches over their heads. Use one to get your eye in, if you have to, but make the others count.” He looked down at Blade. “You’d better be lighter than you look, or I’ll have you on a bloody diet for the rest of the month. Either that or I’ll just cut that sodding leg off. Now make a fucking decision ………. which one?”

Given a choice between facing something which rejoiced in the name of Flesh-Eating Bull, or Lieutenant Jon Lyle in a bad mood, Blade knew which he’d opt for, any day, but setting himself up as dinosaur bait didn’t seem to be an option right now. “That one over there, sir, and if I’m wrong, I probably won’t live long enough to do the punishment run, so I won’t really care …….”

“Don’t get clever,” grinned Lyle. “You’re not dead yet,” and with that, he grabbed Blade by one arm and his uninjured leg and hoisted him onto his shoulders.

The soldier let out one quiet gasp of pain, then promptly blacked out. Lyle bent down, his breath hissing slightly under the other man’s weight, grabbed Blade’s rifle, then started running towards the chosen anomaly.

The largest of the carnotaurus pack broke into a run. Stephen took a deep breath, raised the rifle to his shoulder and took aim. He could do this, he knew he could. The first grenade flew high. Fuck it! He fumbled in the pocket of Lyle’s tac vest. Taking too long, taking too fucking long.

The five predators fanned out in a classic flanking movement.

Stephen dropped to the ground, his left elbow resting on his left knee. Take it slow. Breathe out. Stop shaking. Stop fucking shaking.

“The one on the right’s mine!” yelled Lyle, a second before a burst of automatic fire from behind Stephen caused the rest of the group to stop in their tracks, weaving their upper bodies from side to side, heads turning, trying to locate the source of the noise.

The rattle of the assault rifle jolted Stephen out of his paralysis. His movements became swift and sure, and a moment later, the middle predator in the pack was hit in the chest by the second rifle grenade. Its rib case exploded outwards, showering the two nearest creatures with blood and gobbets of flesh.

“Two down, three to go,” breathed Stephen. “Nice shooting, Lyle.”

The soldier had tried a new tactic, firing not at the head or body of a carnotaurus, but at its legs, the bullets ripping through muscle and sinew, shattering bone and effectively hamstringing the creature. Lyle’s victim fell heavily to the ground, small arms trying, and failing to lever it upright. It wasn’t dead, but it had been neutralized as a threat.

Stephen’s next grenade was equally successful, and a third creature fell, twitching and crying out in a high pitched keen.

Sickened, Stephen fell back closer to the anomaly, re-loading as he ran. Why the fuck couldn’t they take the hint? He didn’t want to kill any more of them, but he couldn’t afford to allow the creatures to pursue them through the next anomaly, either. Not with Blade unconscious and having to be carried by Lyle.

Turn back, damn you, just go home!

Another burst of fire from Lyle cut up the ground in front of the last two predators, sending up dust and grass and a shower of small stones. The creatures hesitated. Another series of raking shots decided them, and as one, the last two turned and headed back through the anomaly that had brought them here, leaving their wounded companion still trying to use its puny forelimbs to lever itself off the ground. Every time the carnotaurus tried, it bellowed in fear and pain.

Stephen reached Lyle and shoved the soldier’s own rifle back at him, the last grenade loaded ready for firing.

“You’re better with these than me, put the fucking thing out of its misery, we can’t leave it like that!”

Lyle’s eyebrows jumped up in surprise. “That’s our last grenade.”

“Use it, or I go back and get close enough to blow its brains out, but either way, we aren’t leaving it like that. Now you get on with it! For all we know its friends’ll be back any minute.”

The Special Forces lieutenant sighed then took careful aim. The last grenade flew true. The wounded creature’s chest exploded in a bloody ruin and the bellowing stopped.

Stephen nodded, tight-lipped. “Thanks.”

Lyle’s hazel eyes met his, holding both sympathy and understanding and he returned the nod. The soldier rummaged in his pack and pulled out a pair of night vision goggles and a head-torch. “It’s full dark on the other side. You take the goggles, I hate the bloody things, they make me want to heave.”

“Bet you can’t play computer games either,” said Stephen, pulling on head straps and doing his best to stop the goggles descending to meet the bridge of his nose.

“And you can?”

“Not according to Connor… OK, what’s the plan?”

“I carry Sleeping Beauty, you try to keep both of us alive. Simple, really, like all my best plans.” Lyle heaved the still unconscious Blade up onto his back again. “It’s dark, there’s a step of a couple of feet down into cold water, about thigh deep.”

“And?”

“That’s as far as I got. So in best British Army fashion… after you, old chap.”

Stephen grinned, sketched a quick bow, and stepped forward through the light, into the darkness, and immediately discovered that with the shimmering light of the anomaly hanging in the air, the night-vision goggles were worse than bloody useless. Everything around him promptly turned a weird and very unhelpful shade of algal green. He stumbled on for about a metre before banging hard into a rock wall. The sound of small stones detaching themselves and dropping down into the extremely cold water didn’t make him feel any better.

A second later, even more light arrived, and he heard Lyle’s grunt as he staggered under Blade’s weight, nearly sinking to his knees in the stagnant and extremely smelly water.

Fuck it, the goggles were not helping. Stephen shoved the headset up and looked around, seeing by the light of Lyle’s torch. They were in a confined space, no wider than two metres across, with rock walls on both sides. The darkness positively swallowed the torchlight and gave nothing back.

“Shift your arse,” grunted Lyle, “This fucking thing’s trying to rip every bit of metal off me, and if we stand here much longer, it might just succeed.”

Stephen took a hesitant step forwards. His foot sank slightly in the ooze, but the floor seemed solid enough, so he took another couple of steps. Something nudged at his thigh and he let out a startled yelp, before realizing that he’d brushed against a piece of floating debris.

He pulled it out of the water for a closer look. Black, waterlogged wood… and without a shadow of a doubt, it had been cut to shape by a human being. Excitement pulsed through his tired body and he carried on walking, one hand trailing lightly along the wall for balance.

“Careful with that wall,” breathed Lyle. “This place is none too stable. Don’t walk into any of the props, or there’s a good chance the whole fucking lot will collapse.”

“Where the hell are we?” Stephen swiveled to face the soldier, and almost lost his balance as one boot dragged heavily in the silt.

“No bloody idea, mate, but if we’ve been very, very good boys in a past life, we might just find ourselves walking out onto yet another piss-wet Cumbrian hillside.”

“And if we haven’t been good?”

“Then there’s a high chance we’ll find ourselves on the wrong side of a roof collapse, but judging by the draught I can feel edging its way round your fat arse, we might just be lucky. We’re in an old mine adit, but where the fuck we’re going to come out, I have no bloody idea. So shift yourself, Hart, this lazy sod’s starting to wake up, and I don’t want to drop him in the water if I can help it, but he’s fucking heavy and I’m not bloody Superman …………”

Still gripping the broken lump of wood like a talisman, Stephen struggled on through the water, testing each step, but gradually gaining confidence as his over-tired and adrenaline fueled brain struggled to catch up with what Lyle was saying.

The smell that Declan had described in the notebook was rotting wood. The rotting wood of the props that the miners had used to shore up loose rock in the roof and walls, when they’d encountered fractured areas and voids.

“Lyle, that’s daylight ahead!”

“Ryan’s right, you know, you really are an unobservant sod at times, Hart. Yes, I know. What did you think it was, another bloody anomaly?”

“I thought it was your torchlight reflecting on the water,” Stephen muttered, flipping the light enhancing goggles down over his eyes again. The green intensified and he could just make out the end of a long, straight tunnel, with weak sunlight filtering through some form of blockage.

“No imagination, that’s your trouble, Dr Hart. Don’t you recognize the light at the end of the tunnel when it’s staring you in the face? Now get a fucking move on!”

The distance was greater than it looked and for an agonizingly long time, the small area of light seemed to come no closer. Lyle’s breathing started to rasp harshly and he lapsed into a grim silence in which it became increasingly clear that he was struggling to carry Blade’s weight and still stay upright in the silt and debris which choked the floor of the mine adit.

Stephen forged on as quickly as he could, catching his own shins painfully on various underwater obstructions, but each time he simply bent down in the foul smelling water and heaved whatever he found out of the way. His hands were numb with cold and he knew he’d ripped his palm on something metallic and sharp, but the light was coming closer and that was all that mattered.

How long it took to reach the end of the tunnel, he’d never know, but gradually the smell of fresher air replaced the gaseous stink of decomposing wood and rotting leaves and light filtered cleanly past the half a dozen dilapidated planks that had been nailed up over the entrance. Two heavy kicks were all that was needed to dispose of them, and seconds later, Stephen and Lyle staggered out into a tangle of undergrowth.

With a groan of relief, Lyle deposited Blade onto the ground, none too gently, but the injured soldier was still beyond caring. Lyle dragged several deep breaths into his straining lungs then started to laugh weakly.

Stephen stared at him, uncomprehendingly.

The Special Forces lieutenant gestured to a large, hand painted sign above the entrance which proclaimed, in red paint, DANGER - KEEP OUT.

Still laughing, Jon Lyle subsided into the wet undergrowth.

Wherever, and whenever they were, it wasn’t the fucking Cretaceous, and right now, that was about all that mattered to either of the men.

Beside them, Blade groaned, opened his eyes, rolled over onto one side and was promptly sick.

When he’d finished heaving, the soldier stared around him blearily and muttered, “Those kids can’t fucking cook, that’s for sure. That tasted as bad coming up as it did going down.” He spat again. “Did you bring my pack, sir?”

“Ask Dr Hart nicely, and the answer might be yes. Why, have you got some painkillers?”

Blade closed his eyes and managed the ghost of a grin. “Better than that. I’ve got two cans of beer.”

Stephen stared at him in amazement. “You’ve been lugging beer around and you didn’t tell me? That’s just bloody selfish.”

“Saving it for a special occasion, sir. Are we there yet, by the way?”

Lyle made a swift grab for the pack, narrowly beating Stephen to it. “No bloody idea, but we’ve got beer, so who cares?”

Half an hour later, muddy, wet, bloody and smelling faintly of alcohol, the three men staggered along a narrow track overhung on both sides with trees. A woman walking a collie dog stopped in her tracks and looked like she was seriously considering screaming.

Stephen treated her to the best smile he could muster. “You wouldn’t mind telling us where we are, would you?”

“Mill… Millrigg,” the woman stuttered and her dog sniffed suspiciously at the three of them and then backed off, growling.

Lyle shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to recommend this route for the Duke of Edinburgh hike, gentlemen. You couldn’t direct us to Tarnthwaite, could you, ma’am? We seem to have slightly mislaid ourselves.”

The woman relaxed slightly, and even gave them a tremulous smile. “Carry on down the track and you can’t miss it,” and with that, she grabbed her dog by the collar and hurried on past them.

Stephen called after her, “You couldn’t tell us what date it is, could you? We might be rather overdue …………”

With an expression that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a frightened rabbit, the woman broke into a run and didn’t answer.

“Nice try,” muttered Lyle. “Shame she took you for the village idiot.”

“I thought she fancied me!”

“Dream on,” said Blade, draping his arm heavily round Stephen’s neck. “Can I have a carry?”

“No. I’m sick of kids. You can bloody well walk, or we’ll leave you behind.”

The sign that said Tarnthwaite – Private Property led directly towards a cluster of buildings, then past them into a large, and very familiar grey flagged yard.

A small girl with long blonde hair held back in a plait paused in the act of grooming a jet black Lakeland pony to yell loudly, “Daddy! Dad! They’re back! I told you so!”

Then, entirely heedless of her own clean clothes and his monumentally filthy state, Vicky Thornton hurled herself into Stephen Hart’s arms and to everyone’s surprise, including her own, promptly and noisily burst into tears.

Stephen grinned over her head at Blade, who was now draped heavily on Lyle. “Hell fire, she is human after all!”

And then a small and well aimed fist caught him under the ribs and he doubled up, coughing, “Daddy’s been upset!”

“I’ll make it up to him, sweetheart,” breathed Stephen, watching as Ryan came out of the house at a run, closely followed by Lester.

Vicky Thornton grabbed Stephen by the hand and towed him forwards, and then he was in Ryan’s arms and it was over. It was fucking over. He buried his head in his lover’s neck and Ryan’s arms were round him, and he could hear Vicky yelling for Ditzy but none of it mattered except Ryan. It was still 2008 and they were back.

The stubble on Ryan’s face rasped against his own, and soft lips slid over his. Stephen opened his mouth for a deep, warm kiss. Eventually, Ryan drew back. “What do you think you’re playing at, Hart? You trail in after ten days, reeking of beer, and reckon one kiss is going to get you out of trouble?”

Next to them, Stephen heard Lyle’s saying, “Don’t blame me, darling, I just got dragged along for the ride!”

In the silence that followed, Vicky announced loudly, “I’m glad you’re back as well!” as she reached up and planted a kiss on Blade’s cheek.

“Would there be any point at all in asking what the hell you three have been up to?” asked Sir James Lester, his tone of voice entirely at odds with the look in his eyes as he pulled Lyle into his arms for a quick but thorough kiss.

“Blade’ll write the report,” said Lyle, flipping the injured soldier a casual finger.

“It was my anomaly that got us back!”

“Sheer luck. By your own admission you played Ip Dip Sky Blue!”

“Crap. I read the notebook. It was obviously a bloody adit!”

“Don’t swear in front of the child,” clucked Lyle disapproving. “OK, I’ll do the bloody report.” He took a deep breath, and intoned in a stage whisper, “… well… once out of the Pit…”

Then Lester’s lips covered his, firmly and uncompromisingly, and for once in his life Lieutenant Jon Lyle was entirely happy to shut up and let someone else take control.

They were back.


End file.
